Brian D’Souza on DJing, wellness, and the future of audio experiences

Steve: [00:00:00] Brian, welcome to the experienced designers. Brian: Thank you very much for having me. Steve: Amazing. No, thank you very much for having us here today. So we're in your humble abode in your studio, in, in London. privilege to be here. And, yeah, looking forward to diving in. I'm really just unpacking the work you're doing. and just learn a little bit more about your journey, to where you are today. These things always make sense when you look back, don't they, in terms of your life. So I'd love to go a little bit more into that, or maybe not, who knows? so look, let's just open up, just tell us a little bit, a little about, your, your background or those early formative days with like music, right? Where did it stem from? What were some of the influences to that? where's some of, yeah, if you just reflect back now on some of those foundational moments as a. As, Brian D'Souza. Brian: certainly you mentioned that music has been the kind of anchor to everything that I've done and this [00:01:00] exploration into music and sound and what it's doing to our brain and body, why we love it so much, or why we hate it, and it has such a impact on us. And my interest, stem from just an interest in music as a kinda gateway to exploration of the world, gateway into different cultures. I, remember like early experiences of listening to music, and that was the music that was played in my, my house when I was growing up. My, my parents selection and stuff. But, and then with my friends as a young person, as a teenager, Quite quickly, I started to develop this taste, this curiosity in terms of okay, this is the music I'm hearing now, but there's all this other stuff that seems to be out there. How do I get access to that and how to explore that. And radio One at the time and John Peel in particular was one of the roots for me to like access all this like amazing music that was just coming out from all around the world. Yeah. And I would listen to his show late at night [00:02:00] with a little notepad. This was pre-internet days. And I would write down all the track lists that he would, all the tracks he would play. And then I would go to my local record shop, but the weekend with my pocket money and I would be like, okay, let's go and try and track down all these releases. And so that gave me quite a wide range. 'cause obviously, he was famous for like his eclectic taste of music. And I quickly then, Started to amass this kind of like music collection that then I guess started life as, CDs. This was pre, obviously internet, so no streaming, no MP threes or anything like that. it was CDs, some tapes as well. But then I quickly understood and started to understand that vinyl was really the format that I needed to invest into because the best off was seemingly sometimes only on vinyl. And I was going to the record shop and they were like direct me to the vinyl aisle and stuff. So I borrowed my dad's turntable and I, therefore inherited some of his music collection. So that was great. And I still have some of his records to this day. and Miles Davis Bitches Brew is like [00:03:00] a big formative album for me and some, just loads of the classics, Motown, soul music, some classical, a couple of things from my mom's, heritage as well. She's from born in Kenya, but originally from Goas. There was some Kenyan choral music as well. So I started to get access into that and having had one turntable and then this was like towards the end of my schooling, DJ culture seems, seemed to come onto my radar. And it was initially what interests me was the scratch DJ culture, hip hop music in particular. And so I wanted to scratch, I thought, oh, I have to get another turntable. So I got another turntable and then started to buy more hip hop records and started to try and learn how to scratch, which immediately I found almost impossible to do. I was like, wow, this is like a real skill that, was pretty out, much out of reach. And I guess I just didn't really pursue that. Much further. 'cause I like that, started to get into more dance music and stuff in Glasgow where I was born and brought up [00:04:00] very much house and techno in a city. it's this industrial rawness that comes from this kinda like working class roots. Yeah. And so therefore, the obvious kinda music and seemingly the stuff that was played out in shops and clubs and, I wasn't going to clubs at that point, but, the stuff that seemed to be on the radar was this kind of like housing techno scene. So I started to kinda get involved with that. Yeah. Steve: and what era was that? what time, what timeline was that? Brian: So that was like late nineties. Late nineties. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Yeah, I started to go clubbing. I started to get into that sort of culture. I was DJing with my friends and then I went to university and we started to run parties and club nights and book live acts and things like that. and that kind of sparked, I guess that was my first foray into the music industry as such. and at the same time when I went to university, my degree was in psychology, so I was really interested in trying, it's how can I bring these two disciplines together, music and psychology, the psychology of [00:05:00] music. And so that was my first foray into this kind of exploration into what music is doing to our. Brain and body and and to people and why it has this such a allure. There's such a power. and my earliest experiment I remember doing, which is a real kind of game changer for me was a first year uni. We were given the sort of co blanc freedom to create our own psychological experiment. So I said, okay, let's do something with music. And it was with my little kind of cohort that I was with, and we got people in a room and we played them different types of music, fast, slow, repetitive, not so repetitive. And we got them to do this maze, this task that they had taken like focus on. And then we timed them to do the maze and. It was amazing the results because the times that people would take to complete the maze were completely different based on the different music conditions that we were playing. So the fastest completion times was the fast and repetitive music, and it start, and the slowest times was funnily enough, the slower music was, [00:06:00] produced slower times, but the actual slowest as a result was, when there was no music at all. And it was just silence. And, I just, from that actually, the, silences, especially in that kind of like lab environment was like very uncomfortable for people. And yeah. And that was very distracting for them. And inhibited their attention, attention for the task at hand. But. The, that was my first kind of insight into kind of, I guess this kind of, principle of rhythmic entrainment. how the, we are all as human beings inherently rhythmical. the first thing we hear in the third trimester when we're in the womb is a rhythm. It's the heartbeat, it's the mother's speech pattern, et cetera. So it's such a fundamental part of what makes us human is this idea of rhythm. And so rhythmic entrainment is just something that's ingrained into us. we hear a beat say it's in a restaurant, we're gonna tune in time to that beat, and we're not gonna know that we're doing that, but we just can't help it. Steve: Yeah. Brian: so we can, and, similar on the dance world, obviously my experiences as a dj, you'd be in a club and you could get everyone like in this kind of, [00:07:00] this resonating body where everyone is tuned in, to the same kind of same BPM. same. Same rhythm. and at that time at university I was having all this experience, just ping my way, really like doing these bar gigs. And obviously with bar gigs slightly different from a club or maybe entirely different from a club where your club 'cause of the volume, the amplitude of the music, and just the nature of the experiences. that's the primary thing, right? So you're in there and you're dancing and you're, the music is the first thing. But in a restaurant, obviously you're there to socialize, there's to eat, you're there to drink if it's in a bar. And so therefore the, music is very much from the background of the experience, but it's still having an impact. it's still on your subconscious. and if you, so my, my, my first hand like experience with that was that if I am playing a set that seems to. Know, create the right atmosphere for the room, then people are gonna have a more enjoyable experience. They're gonna stay longer, and we're gonna have a busier bar right to the end [00:08:00] of the night. and if I do a really good set, I'll have a few people coming off and going, oh, what was that track? What was that track? So you can like, push the music from the background into the, for if it's done in a, in the right, in a way. So Steve: see, and, we know that kind of, DJs orchestrate the level, the the, impact of the music, taking, de developing these kind of journeys for the audience. What I mean, just that from an experiment point of view, what did you learn from that? To just be testing these different, like sounds and ways of working, like what else did you describe that to us? standing there in front of potentially even thousands of people. yeah. Just to share a bit more. Before you do that, I just wanna double check here. We can cut this. Brian: That's No, You're good. Steve: I didn't want it to get Okay. Yeah, go. Brian: I had all these different experiences. the thing I love about DJing, and I still DJ to this day, so I'm 25 years into this whole DJ thing, [00:09:00] and, The thing I love is every single performance set or whatever it is that one might do is entirely different. So the thing I learned quite quickly is never overly prepare, never try and predict like what songs or, try and memorize like what songs work for our previous dance for they're not potentially gonna work for this. Dance for is always in the moment. And it's always this connection that you have with the audience and the environment and surroundings. that could be things like the how, the sound system performs and trying to play music that's more tuned to that could be the room acoustics and just the set and setting and stuff that the, you know, the performance kind of dictates. but the, crucial thing is it's this kind of two-way communication between you and the audience. So you play a track and you're visually. monitoring, like what the audience reaction is. Yeah. And you're trying to communicate to them and tell the story, but you gotta make these judgment calls like, every second of the way to say [00:10:00] okay, I can, I'm making this judgment that I'm gonna start with this type of music 'cause that's gonna be the thing that's gonna be appreciated most and kinda welcome everyone in and not alienate it too much. But then I want to try and challenge them and I wanna bring them on this journey where we're gonna have this kinda like, shared experience and we're gonna try and reach this kind of optimal state of transcendence, if you wanna be grandiose with it. But like this, flow state is the big sort of like driver towards this where, you know, for me as a dj, this is the thing that I, guess I'm addicted to really. But it's being, trying to strive for that optimal state of being where essentially you're in that moment time elapse, you're not thinking about anything else and you're just going with the, motions. And I think that for my psychology degree, that was also something I was studying. my high chick in my high came up with the studio flow. And it was very much about being this optimal state. And what the way he defines that is this kind of like sweet spot between the challenge, human challenge, personal challenge that you, present itself. That could be a skill that you're trying to learn. Like it [00:11:00] could be mixing records or it could be playing an instrument, whatever it is. It could be anything, it could be gardening or something. But then it's, so it's, like meeting, like you spend your 10,000 hours and you're a proper pro at it. you're good. And then delivering that in the moment to that audience and connecting with that audience or that experience in that kind of way. Yeah. And if you get that right, you, can achieve that flow state that I think is like such a crucial, moment of human flourishing and like something that, we should all try and strive for in our own kind of like way with our own different disciplines that we have invested into. Absolutely. Steve: You talk a lot. you've mentioned previously in some of, some, interviews and things that you do, as around active listening and. I'm just curious to get your, take on like win today's world with people not actively listening as much or perhaps, we're not as conscious, living as conscious perhaps as we should. And also I think there's something about sound [00:12:00] and music period in terms of. How people value it or even appreciate it or even understand it. Because obviously, your lens is very specific in the world from a musical perspective. So what's, what do you see in this? 'cause obviously this is generated opportunities and businesses that you've think gone out and created. Yeah. which will definitely get to get onto, but what's your view on that in terms of this kind of more active listening and it's opportunity? I think for even just say the average person out there, I don't wanna say it like that, but you get my point. It's, the people just walking on the street every day going to work. Brian: I think how we, I think, how we define music as it's our general term has evolved, right? And, largely that's due to a few different factors that could be like the format, so we've gone from, as I mentioned before, vinyl, to tapes, to CDs, to now streaming. And it's music essentially is almost like a utility. It's on tap, through Spotify, YouTube, or whatever. We've got [00:13:00] these means of just turning it on. It's like you turning on your taps, like you pay your Spotify bill, let you pay your watch bill. Yeah. And it's all always available. And so then music becomes this kinda ubiquitous thing that, you have to invest less into, and pro previously, I've been, I'm don even wanna know how much money I've invested into, from a financial point of view, but certainly from a time perspective as well. that whole kind of like going to a record shop, spending my pocket money when I was a teenager, and then just continuing that kind of like idea of you're, you're creating these kinda narratives between yourself in this music and you've much more kind of like active in that process, let's say. now it's just you can get everything instantaneously like that. the issue with that, I think is, that you've got too much choice, right? And it's the tyranny of that, that people might find challenging. And then therefore the algorithm comes in and we essentially just, yeah. It takes over. So Steve: we stopped. We've stopped digging. We stopped digging. Yeah. Yeah. it's, it, I, [00:14:00] what I see is like this kind of huge long tail now in music, but there's, there must be so much goodness in that long tail, which historically used to go to a record store and dig and find those records. Yeah. I know you can do it on Spotify and just search and, but that's. Brian: The interesting thing is there's so much more volume. the interesting thing, there is more volume and there's obviously the tools and technologies that maintain the kinda quality of the release. So there's a kind of whole kind of thing around is it good enough? And yes, a lot of the times the music is good enough, but does it say something original and unique? Is it, can it be valued and. Five years time or whatever, the jury's out. It's obviously subjective and there's music for everyone now. And I, and I don't begrudge the whole fact of we're now moving into a much more of a creator economy where it comes to the, the everyday person, such as myself, I'm not really kinda musically trained, and I've had access to technologies that allow me to create my own musical, songs and compositions that, serve my purpose and help my [00:15:00] creativity come to the fore. So that, that's a great thing. Ultimately, I think when it comes to, back to your question or an active, and I guess the answer to that is passive. a lot of our musical experiences are now passive, just turn your Spotify on. And it's what is the best music for me to cook to or to work out to, or to do some activity to? And. It's an accompanying soundtrack to those, activities that we do as the primary kind of like thing. And, if we get that it's gonna make those activities more pleasurable or working out, more effective or whatever, and there's all this sort of science and psychology around that, around functional kind of value of music, which, which is really gonna great. And that's, all very worthwhile. Yeah. but what's actually probably being lost a little bit is this idea of just listening for, listening's sake, this idea of being active. you get it, as I mentioned, in a club to a certain extent in a live music performance because you're there and you can be completely tuned into the experience, [00:16:00] but a lot of the time, when is the last time that anyone's sat down at home and put a an album on? And just sat and listened to it for its entirety. Whereas I remember doing that so much through my childhood. Like I would go to finish my story around like going and spend my pocket mind in the record shop with my John PU list. And I would come home and I would have the cd and it was like brilliant. I play that start to finish and I play it again. And I would go through each track and I would look at the liner notes and spend the whole afternoon with one CD and probably the whole week until I bought the next one, so you would invest much more time. Whereas now we're in skip culture where you listen to. Maybe, skip through an album, find a favorite song, listen to that a few times, then you're on to the next thing. So the shelf life of music is a lot shorter. So I think there's value, and this is where it comes into a lot more, the kind of, a more philosophical approach. Whereas if we could be more active in, in, in, our experiences, just in general, in a kind of mindful kind of sense, then we can per perhaps have a much richer kind of experience where we're in the [00:17:00] moment and we can appreciate that moment for what it is. Steve: And I've noticed there's been a, there's been an uptick in, like listening cafes where with, shelves of records and it's dedicated specifically to just come and have a coffee, and listen to music. so I've seen in Japan as an amazing one that's really beautifully designed. So more of that please. I think, Brian: yeah, I think that I think comes, it comes from Japan that listening, Kathy. But I think that. it's again, there's a balance here, like where unfortunately, the economics have to rule the roof sometimes. Yeah. So you go in and it's amazing speaker set and they've obviously invested a lot, but then there's all this kinda noise from, servers kinda serving food and people clinking cutlery and everything else that might detract from that purity of the listening experience. I had a great, experience in a new listening bar called Space Talk, which celebrated its first birthday, which is in London, in East London. And they've just done it right. I think, like they still can [00:18:00] have the people in the space, but they've got enough space in there that it's very private. Yeah. Like each of the different booths and different seating kind of arrangements they've done is allows people to, they can talk, they can drink, they can have a nice social time, but the music is at definitely at the for and like that. That was the, the first, I've never been to the ones in Japan where it's a bit more militant, I believe. Like where you, if you're talking, you're kinda like told to shut up, it's very, quiet and, things maybe even take your shoes off in the door or whatever. But that kind of thing sounds beautiful. Obviously, you don't wanna be police still overly policed, yes. Sometimes you have to protect the sanctity of this Yeah. Experience. Yeah. Steve: Yeah. so tell us about this kind of moving or building on the DJing. Lifestyle and obviously then evolving your, how you're bringing sound to the world in different ways and experimenting and this kind of convergence between, this, the psychology element and the music. what's what was [00:19:00] next on that kind of journey for you in terms of how you started experimenting and what you on it? Brian: Yeah, so I did that experiment I mentioned, which is showing this kinda idea of rhythmic and enjoyment or whatever. And then I went on, after my psychology degree, I did a few other things, in the kinda music and psychology space within the degree. And then I went on to do a master's in sound design. And that was allowed me to spend some time studying. Sound and film, all these directors saying, sound is 50% of the film experience, but we think of, we never think of going to hear a film, right? It's like we're going to see a film and then the sound is there, but the sound is so crucial. 50% are even more in some directors like perspective. So that was kinda interesting. And then a lot of stuff around, acoustics. And then with my kind of previous hat on, it was like the, restaurant acoustics. And like I was, I did the study in this restaurant for my, dissertation where we would, This, kinda notion of speech intelligibility. So it's what is the speech intelligence? if [00:20:00] I'm sitting a meter away from you Yeah. In a restaurant, can we have a conversation at a normal level? And there's so many cases that just wasn't even possible and it was just incredible that obviously you weren't there. You there to obviously have food, but then talk to your friends, like your partner or whatever, like across the table. it's not like we're just shouting distances, but we're ended up yelling at each other and it's like, why is that a thing that we're not considering in the design of these spaces? what is happening here? Where's that roadblock and why is sound not in there? And it's just, I guess it's similar to films, although that's maybe not spoken about in the film industry. It's definitely something that is, is absolutely acknowledged that they gotta treat sound with respect. we've gotta invest in the, audio soundtrack and all the kind of like other aspects of the sound design of a film. Like why is sound design or music design in a restaurant not like a thing. It just wasn't, and especially, I know I'm talking back it, I think it's. There's been a slow, like improvement perhaps, but I still see like massive kind of, [00:21:00] there's, all these kind of places that are not really attending Steve: to that. Yeah. We should be getting hands at Zimmer's quality, like restaurant sound experience side intentionality around it. Yeah. Brian: Yeah, for Steve: sure. For sure. that's what differentiates him though, because of the, his obviously his craft and he's a true artist in the form and he, the way he brings new sounds, I think in the J movie he was like, creating sounds that just hadn't existed before in order to fit the movie or to Yeah, bring it to life. it's just a, that, that level, that 1% in terms of that, skill. so what did, how did you then continue to evolve that from your, from a business perspective? Brian: I finished university and I had all these kind of like skills that didn't necessarily lead into a job that I could find at least. I was DJing, but that wasn't really paying the bills and that seemed like more of a hobby at the time. so I set up this little business called Open Ear, and it was, it was based in s premise that I mentioned before is like our ears are always open, they're always receiving sound information and that sound [00:22:00] information being processed in the brain and doing different things in terms of how it affects our behavior, but we're not really maybe thinking about it. So we're gonna call this company Open Ear and essentially it's gonna be working with on a business to business level with different brands, and this is. Leisure, retail, shops, bars, cafes, et cetera, hospitality. And, and we're gonna start having these conversations with how they're playing music, what could be better, like in terms of the curation, in terms of delivery and everything else. And I would go around all these places where I was in Glasgow and I'd be like, you playing music? what? Why are you playing this music? No one could give me an answer, like, why they're playing the music. It's like usually just, yeah, just something that, yeah, we've all just decided to do. It was just like, but literally everywhere's playing it. And that obviously contents today. music is ubiquitous in every single kind of commercial space really. I was thinking like, why is no one really thinking about this? Because I, my first un experiences, this is changing people's behaviors. My, my, that was my academic experience. My firsthand experience when I was DJing was, I, if I'm playing this right, then people are gonna stay longer and they're gonna spend more money. Do [00:23:00] people not wanna make more money? it just seems crazy that there, there's a missed opportunity. Yeah. So over here was a kind of yeah. A business that I set up to, to have these conversations. We built this platform. It was an. I guess you could, frame it like a, Spotify before business, this is before Spotify existed. So it was a bit of software that turned into a web-based platform that turned into kind of like an app-based platform that allowed, the delivery of a lot of music content curated for the brand. and I worked with lots of different music curators that came onto the team. So it was handpicked by humans. Humans that with, with a craft, hand simers like, level, I would say to my old team. And then, and yeah. Delivered really bit of software where we could schedule different music for different times of day. Yeah. We built these tools that will allow people to really harness that power of music in the kinda real time environment, busy bustling restaurant or whatever. we created this kind of app that had an energy slider on it. [00:24:00] So you could as a bar manager be there and you could be like, not a dj, but they could play the DJ because they'd be like, all of a sudden I've got this big bricking coming in and wanna make live and up the atmosphere, let's whack the energy side or up Nice. at the end of the day, we don't wanna be playing really up tempal music. We wanna keep everywhere there a bit longer. We slow everyone down. So we're gonna reduce the energy on the side and Steve: the other parameters in there as well. In terms of. Brian: we talked about a lot of different things. volume was a thing and that was really hard to police. we talked about putting microphones and there's companies out there that do that now, where the volume levels are kind regulated based on the, kinda like the overarching sound input. which is cool. And then, having the ability to be really in, kinda in the moment. So there's a lot of kinda like moments where, I dunno, some kind of cultural event has happened. Some something that is like, people are talking about it and you wanna be able to deliver the musical experience to relate to that. So that could be, Christmas is obvious. that's, like the thing that runs around every, year. But [00:25:00] that's such a big thing is like Christmas playlist and, bringing that in. but more interesting, I think what we were always striving to do was like save someone, a classic musician could of died, I remember. Bowie or Prince Yes. Whatever, passed away and everyone was talking about it. Everyone obviously, or most people love like, their music and who they are. So we were immediately like playing like lots of Prince and Bow whatever, in art, the playlist. you go to these places and immediately it's a mark of respect to these entire, time on artists. And it just shows to the customers, even if it is just subconscious, that the brand is really like talking their language, talking to 'em, having this kind of communication, with their audience, and really living, breathing kind of entity, Steve: Yeah. Yeah. It's keeping them like really attuned to the, kind of the micro thing, events that happen, just ad hoc in society. Yeah. that's cool. Very cool. how did that, what was [00:26:00] your kind of, evolution for, maybe not evolution? what was your, what was some of like your. Like light bulb moments in there. In terms of just that experience, like designing that, what were some of the learnings that you took in terms of continued experimentation, testing these different environments, creating this amazing tool? What was, what was some of the reflects that you've had from that? Brian: Yeah, there was an early one. we worked with this chain of gastro pubs just in the, I say London, they kinda commuter belt and it was a gastro pub. So they had a bar area, they had a restaurant area and they were playing fairly generic pop music before we came in. They were like, we want to try and do something, that's a little bit more on brand. so we kinda create these playlists and we said to them, okay, what's the target here? is it the bar? Is it restaurant? what, times of day, et cetera. And they were like, let's focus, try and get the restaurant atmosphere going. try and keep diners longer. So we made a playlist much more. I guess classic, a lot of soul, lot of funk [00:27:00] music or whatever, like much more in the dining kind of experience rather than the bar and their initial response to having then played it and seeing the reaction to the audience was they were a bit worried because they were like, oh, the bar seems like quieter or whatever, and, we're not sure how this is gonna really play out and this doesn't feel like necessarily like this is gonna work. But then when they looked to the till receipts, they were like, oh, hang on a minute. there's more people in the restaurant area. They're gonna, they're, staying for longer. They're getting a dessert. They're maybe buying a more expensive bottle of wine. And actually, like with the bar, that was like our, late teen and early twenties kind of audience are buying cheaper alcoholic beverages at the bar. So we're not getting a, like as much of return, but we're easily making up for that. And more so the in, in the restaurant kind of sales. So that was like a set there kinda musical identity for the next 10 years. Like the, that we worked with, it was always like, let's go back to this study and let's think about like how this. Might be like even counterintuitive to begin with, and [00:28:00] we certainly had some over the years, like manager push back and say, no, we're gonna get 'em more like popular or whatever. But I was like, just look at this and let was think about this. So yeah, so that was something that we always kinda yeah. Went back to, and I know this podcast is obviously interested in office environments and so one of our big clients, I dunno if we mentioned clients, but the office groups turned into four hours and beg London, I think number two after WeWork or whatever it became, but, they approached us, and at that time they didn't play any music in the office and this was, they'd had five sites, I think they're up to 50 plus, or maybe even more like now or whatever. But, so there was a young brand and they were trying to create this brand for themselves, this, but also this kind of atmosphere in terms of, it was conducive to cowork and creating a nice environment for people trying to work there. And what some of the things they were saying to us was, okay, we're creating these nice environments. We've got these amazing furniture, we've got these, every, all these kind of like I amenities for everyone, but we've got these open [00:29:00] plan spaces as is such you, obviously typical, and what we're noticing is if someone has a work phone call. Or wants to do like a one-to-one meeting or whatever. that's essentially private. They're going to the vestibule, they're going out to the local cafe and they're not actually using the office what it was. And it's because of this sign, this idea of speech intelligibility. Their speech inte was so good. They was, they were so self-conscious. Self-conscious that they were like trying others all here. They were, yeah. And everyone else is just, he was dropping even if they're not, and so it's, it was really counter what should be like the optimal kind of workspace environment. So they were actually looking at, and they'd looked at the kind of research around white noise, pink noise, different kind of like types of just noise that. I think it's more popular in American offices, but you could just pump in like a sound generator that plays like this, ambient noise and just, on the basics of, that, the, overall noise level and the property will, go up, [00:30:00] but the speech intelligibility will, then go down because like it's being masked. The sound masking idea, it's being masked by this ambient noise. And I said to him, you can achieve that through music. and that's probably gonna help you also communicate a certain story through your, the brand messaging. It's also gonna help us shape potentially like the day as it progresses, and the week as it progresses as well, which is gonna create the right environment. Steve: Your sea as well, your seats, but winter, Yeah, it could be. Different soundscapes for winter versus summer? Brian: yeah. as it turned out to be. And, that, and it's also just like I'm a lot more human to have music being played now. the, but I appreciate the music shouldn't be distracting. It's not gonna be like pop music that you're on the radio because, you want people to able to work and the nature of pop music, it's gonna be distracting. It's gonna grab your attention. that's what pop music is by definition. It's gonna be like there and pop and it's that earworm that gets stuck in your head. So it's not necessarily that. So we've gotta go on this journey to figure out like what is [00:31:00] actually the, right stuff that's gonna be congestive to the wordless environment, achieve that functional sound Ming kind of quality. but also kinda speak to your brand and your brand values and communicate what you need to do to as your brand grows as they subsequently did. So we questioned like all the members at the time. Prior to gonna going in. And the first question is, would you like music or not? So we really pray the chopping block then Yes, I was like, we're gonna lose this deal. Yeah, no, luckily we got I dunno, 60%, 70%, it was like, yes. and that then enabled us to win the, deal and, there was some commonalities in terms of the kind of general flow, like of energy, I guess throughout the day with what people are looking to get from their music. Very difficult thing to talk to, to, to people. It's another one of my learnings, about music with this kinda functional hat on because. Based on like however much experience or knowledge or whatever the time they've invested in their own kinda musical journey. They will [00:32:00] either have, some intuition around that or they just won't at all. it'll just be like, no, I just wanna hear what I like in my playlist or whatever. And it's I can't really think outside that box 'cause that's music to me. It's that box. yeah, there's been certain conversations that have been slightly challenging, to try and, yeah, just posit this notion that look, music can, it can do so many different things at one time. One of those things, especially with a business hat on, is this kind of idea of being functional for whatever that business purpose is or that time. It's not just about your individual taste as well. but we're gonna try and, speak to that a little bit, right? But, it's not just about you and your individual taste, so that, that can be, a challenge, it is what it is. And ultimately the proof is in the pudding. If people are overall are enjoy, the thing is you're never gonna enjoy it, per se. It's gonna be like, you feel more comfortable and you feel more like if there's less people gonna spend money in the local coffee shop 'cause they're [00:33:00] gonna have the meetings at in the office, Steve: right? Yeah. And so there's a lot of things happening unconsciously as well. just which we definitely get on to. can I just start, tell, so now what, where from a sound perspective and that kind of evolution towards like the wellbeing realm, what's been your, because I, you've got so many elements that I feel that. You've been pulling on different, like experiences and education to really Yeah. get into this kind of focus around wellbeing. and obviously this is a growing area for sure. just wellbeing industry, period. and I think sound is a big component of that. Of course. So what's, how do you see the industry right now? Let's start maybe there. what are you seeing out there? What's, Maybe, from a maturity or are there emerging angles or channels that are emerging? Brian: I think there's, I think wellbeing, wellness, that, kind of whole industry, which is multi-billion dollar industry now, it's absolutely huge. But there's been a, in my some [00:34:00] with my experience, there's been a, there's been a pivot, there's been a transition that's gone from, I guess when I'm talking about this is like from more like the spa, hotel, spa kind of audience, type of business, right? Because that was the natural progression for me having run this open air business. and we're dealing with hospitality, we're dealing with hotels, we're dealing with bars and restaurants and shops, but hotels in particular that would have the spa. But the spa was like a kind of almost like an afterthought all, almost all the time. Yeah. And it wasn't the main revenue driver. And, so therefore it was just a thing in the basement that, some people would go to. But, largely speaking, it was not really a major kind of part of what the tail would offer that is. That is changing. I think that people now, and it's, it, seems obvious now when you think about it. Like, why, wouldn't you wanna go to a spa? when you're outta town, that whole wellbeing, massage, whatever, a swim, everything else around health. Yeah, of course. But that wasn't culturally where we were at like 5, 10, 15 years ago. It just wasn't, [00:35:00] so that's been a, an opportunity I think for the hotel industry that have had a space to invest more into that. I think there's been a transition with the kinda wellbeing industry where it's been like much more about beauty and pampered beauty, luxury, et cetera, into actually this can be a real kind of vehicle for positive health impact and benefit. Transformational. Yeah, absolutely. So that kind of recognition and that learning curve that, that needed to be. Have gone on to achieve the kind of, the knowledge and understanding. And I think that, like the industry is still in that journey as far as I can tell. I we're talking very broad brush strokes here, but there's, and there's certainly like a lot of kind of pseudoscience versus science to cut through and like how do what do you anchor yourself to? It's a lot of new startups, in the space selling, these wonder products that like, may or may not have a scientific basis, may or not be proven, may or may not be effective. It's one of [00:36:00] those things that it's, there's a kind of bit of an arms race at the moment. but there's also some really amazing things. And ultimately, I think it's a recognition that the culture has right now around like health and the kind of importance of health and wellbeing as being paramount to, everything that we're doing and achieving as human beings. So that ultimately is a good thing. So I guess my pivot was the fact that I was working with these, hotels that had a spa and really thought about the spa. We were doing their playlist, but it wasn't much it was really just like the last thing on the brief. And then they started to talk more about that. And I had this interest, I guess I'd done 10 years of DJing and I was running this open ear business, that was my day job. And then my night job was the DJing stunt, so it was like full on. And, I became relatively successful. I was literally playing, every weekend I would jet out like most of Europe, I played all over the world. So I was, having this sort of dual life, which, for a lot of times I was trying to give up one side, but I just couldn't because the open air started to establish itself and that'd been like 5, 6, 7 years. And for it to really kinda [00:37:00] get going, then it was gonna get going, building the team, we'd moved to London at that point, so it was like an office down here. And we got up to a, about 20 staff at the peak. And then, but the DJing stuff was cool. I, at least like four albums was getting asked to play in random places like UBA and Kenya and like all over the world. So I couldn't give that up. these, those are life experience and opportunities. There's, it's good. So, being. the place I was in my life, no kids or anything like that. It was just like, let's, just, go for it. but it was tiring and coming up to, we're now like 2019, going into 2020, like I was kinda almost like burning out in that period and I had a kid in 2019, so that was also like another variable that, meant that I just gotta really re-look at the thing. so when COVID came along, I was like, oh, perfect. I'm actually like, I need to have a lockdown and I need to step off of this kind of DJ thing where I'm jetting out. And, I need to spend [00:38:00] more time at home. And I'd been, i'd, sign up prior to COVID, I'd sign up to train in sound therapy. So with the British Academy of Sound Therapy. so this is, the gong bath, the sound bath with the practitioner in terms of that, the sound healer. And I had, mainly it was, I didn't really want to be a sound therapist per se, but I was interested in the, understanding like what is actually going on. 'cause I've been going to these sound baths in London. They seem to be popping up everywhere. I was going, wow, this is really impactful, right? It's really taken me to this really deep place, this really kinda meditative kinda space. And I thought, wow, this, is just from a, just with all my music experience, my sound, design experience, it was like, what is actually happening here? Because it's, it is a powerful thing, I think. And, Steve: so I, and what was, can I just ask that, what was some of the. The elements or the modules within that course? Was it just to share a little bit of Brian: Yeah. Yeah, so I mean there was the Steve: explore, Brian: there were, what I liked about the course and I was [00:39:00] searched a few different courses, but they seemed to have a methodology that was based on the kinda burgeoning science that was out there. there was some kind of thought process into, it wasn't just a, as some of the practitioners do, it's much more free flowing. It's feeling the sound. It's playing in lots of different ways. They were like, no, this is our tried and tested methodology in terms of how we're gonna use these principles that are based on some of the principles that I already knew. I mentioned rhythm con treatment. That was the first thing, right? It was like, I'm gonna play this gong with this heartbeat rhythm and our. Body is gonna entrain itself to that heartbeat. And then if I slow down my playing, we're gonna slow down the body, we're gonna slow down our heartbeat, we're gonna slow down our nervous system. And so simple things like that seem obvious, but it was like, ah, okay. This makes perfect sense from a kind of like science kind of per perspective. so there was things like that. And then there was other things in terms of, you can just borrow from like just general music composition. It was the use of kind intervals. So you might use [00:40:00] like these singing balls and that might be, a singing bowl that's tuned to a, c and then a singing, another sing bowl that's tuned to a g and that's like the perfect fifth kind of interval. And that's generally music composition, like no one as very pleasant, uplifting, like combination of different frequencies. And similarly like the, what was interesting actually was then understanding like the therapy side of this. And that was when you had a sort of pushing pull between the consonants of this perfect fifth, for example, and dissonance, which was much more Maybe di more, more discordant, difficult to like for us to hear. so the tritone would be an example of that, which, the, you know, the classic thing with that was it was known as the devil's tone. It was like this combination of frequency that like, just was actually banned at some stages of the Catholic church type back in the day because it was like evoking the devil. 'cause it was so discordant, and it would do these things to our nervous system in that kinda way. but the idea was that if you've had a trauma and you need [00:41:00] therapy to, help then being in this kind of, this meditative state that the sound therapy, Sound bath, allows you to perhaps achieve, and it's obviously not gonna work for everyone. but that's the intention is that, we'll entrain your heartbeat, we'll lower that. We'll put you in a relaxed state, we'll envelop you with all these kind of like very rich harmonic kinda spectrum of sound. the ba bathing you in this kinda like sound and the room acoustics and everything. So the sound becomes like completely all around you. You're immersed in the sound. And once you are in that kind of almost held space, like then you're, most likely to move from maybe a beta brain move state into an alpha teta brain move state, which is where you're like more susceptible to objective thought, to more creative thoughts, et cetera. And you can really help to process things in a different way. Steve: Yeah, Brian: and I guess this goes back to the kind of idea that we're talking about with active listening, which is that if you can achieve that kind of level and is, through, through like focus and attention and, [00:42:00] almost like through meditative lens, then we can help to really gain more insight into Our perspective on life, like our place within that, the interconnectedness of everything and living things in our environments, et cetera. And that Steve: kind of take it on fate if from memory right, that's almost at that point between consciousness, subconscious kind of really, yeah. Taking people down into that, Brian: Yeah. It's where we're almost in sleep state or like where we're dreaming essentially. So you're awake, but dreaming and stuff. So deltas do the state lower than that and not sleep. Steve: And of course, from a therapeutic point of view, there's lots of opportunities. Brian: Yeah. And it's this kinda idea of ego death, so the eye becomes like less of pressing kind of thing. there's default mode network that drives our every day is less in charge of like how we're operating. So we're able to become much more at one, this kinda idea of like you oneness and oceanic, boundlessness and all these kind of terms that sound therapy might kinda Yeah.[00:43:00] which is, great. And it's, yeah, it's, it, for me it was like, okay, I get this because. With my DJ hat and I'm doing like almost the same thing, but in the opposite way. The DJ thing is building you up to a state of euphoria, but also a transect state, the state of flow that I was talking about. Steve: Yes. Brian: But the sound therapy is bringing you down and also helping you achieve this kind of this, flow state where, time just becomes an, your time keeping messages that can fade away and you're in that kinda moment. And then, as I saying, the mix and match between consonance and dissonance helps to then trigger thoughts, memories, neurons to fire in different ways for you to then maybe confront if it is a trauma that you're suffering from that trauma in this held space, that then you can process in maybe a slightly different way. And then you can, after an hour, whatever the sound therapy sound therapist will bring you back out the other side and. You may just feel relaxed, but you may [00:44:00] also have gained like really kinda crucial insight. Absolute. Absolutely. Steve: so how's this work evolved? How has your work in this and your, obviously this, we'll get love to maybe swell we can dive into, but just Yeah, like what's the, how are you diving into this more? And Yeah. I love that by the way. I, think it's really interesting from taking people on a hide in a club to now going completely the other way, like puppet master. but it, no, it's a fascinating one because it's still all just, it's still grounded in this intentionality of sound, right? And Yeah. In different forms. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, love that you've you've decided to yeah. Just to be curious and look at how gay, how can we play with this in ways and experiment. So Brian: I think The def I'd mentioned definitions before and how we define music has largely been, I think in this kind of cultural moment, is about entertainment, right? It's this commoditization of, music. It's the song, it's the artist, it's [00:45:00] the cultural movement or the genre, whatever that they represent. it's, everything buying into that individual and the music that they create and it's entertainment. It's them on a stage, right? But if you look at the kind of like music on a much more, zoomed out macro level, you're like, music has existed since the earliest, days of homo sapiens like running around the earth and they've bone floats or whatever back then. So music has always been a thing. It's very kind of fundamental to humans. Like I mentioned rhythm before. And for millennia, like it existed as this functional sort of tool, for ceremonies, for communication across tribes for like war, for healing, for lullabies, for all these different functional kind of like purposes. but it's just evolved now into this box of there's all of entertainment and the music industry is there supporting that kind of notion of music as entertainment. So if you just zoom out a little bit and you redefine I think what music is and you [00:46:00] strip away some of the kind of the, industrialization of it and the, cultural kinda component, then you're back to the bare bones of like music as this kinda like functional tool that affects our nervous system, our brain and body in different ways. So I guess like for me having then studied, with, in sound therapy, I had the opportunity to Sale on OD basically got acquired, and just after the sort of COVID period by big sort of background music company. And that was the perfect timing for me because I allowed me to then focus on this new startup that I'd been, getting off the ground called Swell Studio and. The idea of as swell was just to really kinda focus in on projects that would have this intersection of like sound and health in general. And a lot of the projects we do are based on nature. And so listening to the sounds of nature and trying to bring in or be influenced by, or inspired by, nature, [00:47:00] a lot of the principles that underpin like what we deliver is based on these kind of sound therapy principles that I mentioned. like how we can break music or soundscapes down into their constituent parts, rebuild them in terms of this functional aspect that can affect the nervous system or brain body in different ways. And then deliver them through sort of technology. So we're developing like apps and making them try and make them as like inclusive as possible. Just, to have an app on your phone or whatever is great. Like we didn't, we initially tried to just replicate sound therapy, a sound bath in a, in a head fulling experience. But it isn't, from our testing it didn't really work. 'cause you need the sound therapist. This human being actually there, they, they, carry great weight in this whole experience. Like they need the held space. You need the set and setting. You need this whole kind of like acoustic thing. You need the instruments to be live. so that's fine. And that I'm, glad of that because that should exist and that, that does serve a purpose that seems, will benefit a lot of people. Whereas what we are doing is like much more like focusing on like how we can bring [00:48:00] in sounds of nature, deep listening, listening in a forest, bathing, all these kinda principles around the benefits of listening, to nature. and then deliver these things with the kind of like the sound therapy, but also music hat on. Steve: and what's, how would this kind of, How would this work for just, people going about their day because, we are living, I dunno the percentage, but high, the, population in urban. Urban, environments is only gonna be increasing. People are just super busy doing their day to day. I think, the nervous systems all over the place. I, think we need to figure out ways of these nano moments, right? Where can we ground and where can we find these things in our flow of life. And bring more intentional or yeah, focus into maybe just, Hey, I'm gonna take this, like just this break or something just to anchor into potentially a soundscape that will lower my stress [00:49:00] levels or cause or whatever it is. Just just write it down. Yeah. what's, is that a market, is that something we see emerging or developing? where do you see the, practicality elements of this kind of Brian: form? I think you're right. Like I think we're, continuously in fight or flight, right? It's just high stress levels got, time per lots of things in the to do list. Like you're person pulling in so many directions we're trying to get after it. it's crazy because, all these technologies that we as human beings about and obviously get AI coming in. Yeah. the theory would've been that like, we're gonna be working less. But it's just such a core part. I think it's like the human condition of we just have to like work and if there's not work available, 'cause we've solved it through a technology, we'll find other means of making, of spending our time doing something productive. So we need. Productivity is key. but yeah, you're absolutely right. Like having the ability to stop and process things is, super, super important. And I think that, the obvious things that I always talk about with this, just from a personal [00:50:00] perspective, the best ideas that I've ever had have been either in the shower, in the toilet, or on holiday, right? the, the idea for open air as a business like was formed when I was riling around Europe and it was just slowly just stating and it was kinda like, I'm gonna put this to paper. And I came back after that month long trip and I was like, boom, I'm there. There's a business plan right there. and similarly, like with lots of my music production or whatever, it's always been through this kinda lens of getting away from my every day. a lot of the music I make is through these trips that I'm lucky enough to do in different countries collaborating with just different musicians, and cultivating relationships. just in, in a serendipitous kinda manner and then making music in that moment. And that's that's me at my kind of creative, like the high point. And I, was reading the Rick Rubin book, you must have seen it. but the, it's like the, the purpose is not the, the opening quote is it's the aim, the intention is not to be necessarily just creative, it's to create the environments that allow us to be [00:51:00] creative or creative to just flow through us. Yes. Creativity to just be there as, president. And it's I was thinking this myself. 'cause this, I'm very conscious of this stuff, but even me being conscious of this stuff, 99% of the time in my work day is filled with just admin type related things. Yeah. Or whatever deadlines that I've gotta fulfill, but not actually the essence of being creative. It's such a small part. So I guess, yeah. Going into what we're doing with Swell is to try and create sound environments and be delivered in different ways. People the opportunity. Just get away, I guess from, the every day. And the, clever thing I think we've developed with the swell technology is the user, the listener, the, if there's the app user, the business or whatever, they're in charge of the duration of time of the experience. So you can have agency over that. 'cause I think going back to your original question, which is around active and passive listening. Passive listening means you press play on a Spotify place and it can run forever. And therefore you're [00:52:00] like, you're never gonna be able to spend much time attending to that. It's just there, it's whatever, it's the background soundscape. But if you saying I've got five minutes, three minutes even, or 15 minutes, let's say, and you've made that decision then your agency over that time Yeah. Is gonna be, you're much more, Invested into that experience. We talked about investment in terms of music and financial, but this is investment of time that you might have. So allowing the listener to say, I'm gonna listen to this thing. And then for that thing to deliver some sort of functional benefit and also just allow them to escape. Maybe it's based on a, like with a swell, what we've done is create lots of different location based listening experiences. So this is Locations I've been to on my travels mostly. Eventually we'll get other people doing that as well. But it's places such as, Japan, as India, as Cape Verde, as, north of Scotland, the islands. I, I've, had this whole kind of career in music of going around to these different places, interesting spots of natural beauty most of the time, and capturing that through audio, and I've stepped up my kind of [00:53:00] like field recording and audio recording capture kind of game. And so creating these kind of like environments where you can immediately transport yourself to there. And then bringing in through maybe sessions with other musicians or, just sessions that I've done myself with, musical elements that, that there are, a program through the sort of sound therapy like lens. so that's the idea as swell. And I guess what we're working on right now is, the business to business. It's our app. It's designed for like spas and health and wellbeing, like markets, where there's undoubtedly opportunities. And we have examples of projects we've done such as in accompaniment, a massage in a spa treatment room is one. So it's like kind of end-to-end experience, 60 minutes or whatever it could be post the massage was a headphone listening experience just to kind, like completely detach. we've got, examples of working with sort of VibrAcoustic furniture where, literally you're feeling the sound because there's speakers in the chair and like going through the body as well as listening. And we at the moment have a [00:54:00] project with hotel brand that's, in the bedrooms actually. So you can have the app and there's different conditions. there's there's a sleep setting, there's a, wake up setting, there's a kind of escape to, nature setting or whatever. And, and there's a creative inspiration. So they're working from there. So Steve: romantic setting as well. Brian: That's a whole other Bulgar. That's a whole, yeah, that's a whole, yeah. D like dance and Remi, so there's four genres. I, this meta-analysis that you know, is this healing songs? there's lullaby, so sleep songs. Steve: Yeah. Brian: And then dance songs. Yeah. and, hang on, what did I say? The, love songs. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so yeah, that's, like the first we're covering two of those I think. Steve: How, how are things like also evolving with, how did that question again? Two says, the question I want to [00:55:00] ask was actually on the, oh no, it's just gone outta my head. Hang on. Yeah. Yeah. So what I also see with this as well is, not like some of these apps like Headspace and stuff we normally do. Like you sit down, you do a meditation or you do a breath work. What do you see in talking about Okay. Just from a, just a soundscape moment as well. I think adding that in. 'cause when you're sharing this, I think I'm, I think. I love it. It sounds amazing, but I'm also, the way I, this is just me speaking. My, my experience is I normally sit down and do a meditation. That's my active intention, 15 minute, 30 minute an hour, depending on my time. But I've never really thought about sitting down and just sitting with a soundscape exclusively for a period of time. What's some of the, say, differences in that and what are some of the, maybe the science behind that in terms of soundscapes and some of the frequencies or elements that can, or some of the components of that and some of the health benefits. Brian: I think you've pinpointed [00:56:00] one of the major challenges that we have, one is that there's apps like Headspace out there. we're, so we're doing B2B stuff at the moment, right? Yeah. But the intention would be to release a B2C product, like with this, and that would be in the, this app space of Headspace and calm and all the rest of it. So that's a, big challenge. And you're right, like having a guide that, that essentially tells you what to do, prompts you, that's gonna be. Hugely, necessarily for a lot of people, especially novices that are coming into this. So it's almost like in some ways, like listening just to the soundscape is for the pro meditators who don't want the voice. 'cause they kinda know what to do, they know to focus on the breath or whatever and they know how to get into that state, but they just want an environment almost going back to the, what we're talking about, sound masking. they want an environment to kinda cocoon them in that and they wanna be able to set the time, to something as long as an hour or two hours or whatever, like a, long form. So that maybe that helps them to keep some track [00:57:00] of time. So the audio stopped and they're like, okay, this is done. there's, elements to that. There's that, I'm not like, completely, getting away from it. You could, we could easily add like of kind of voice activation, but I think that what I'm interested in is the point of difference where it is like I, I know people. And, dunno how big this, the market is, but the people that would just naturally be turned off by having someone, do a meditation. like I find that with Headspace, I know they put different voice actors in or whatever. It used to just be the founder, right? And, then they added a female and then they added a few more people and stuff. And it's okay, so you can pick and choose your, your preferred voice, which is, important because I find myself, like whatever, like you, you're going to be drawn to one, maybe more, most than the other. So there's, that kind of thing where perhaps you're just turned off fundamentally by having a guy tell you what to do. But hopefully the fact that we're all. To a certain degree an expert in terms of listeners, right? [00:58:00] Because we've been listening since we've been before we were born, right? So we've been listening and we intuitively know like how to listen, right? think about like just all the music that we, absorb and stuff. Like we, we've trained ourselves like very well and listening to music, we understand body knows how to understand like how to like interpret emotions that are evoked through the music. So the idea is that we just need to pivot that kind of like perspective into this kinda idea of intentional, active of listening for that sort of period of time. It's easier said than done, Absolutely. And that's one of the challenges. Time and attention. Steve: Time Brian: and attention two Steve: currencies, aren't they? yeah. And I think it's an individual choice of okay, I consciously want to, I know I need, I want to, whatever the goal might be. Like I want to be able to, I wanna relax a bit more. I'm too stressed. I've got anxiety. I've got all these, different challenges. you shared something off camera, previously, which was more around, some of the project you worked on with [00:59:00] psychedelic treatment as well. Just to share a little bit more about that because it's really interesting of, obviously there's some, a lot of research on psychedelics and, psilocybin, impacts for therapeutic and deep work around therapy. what's been your kind of contribution to that from a sound perspective? Brian: I think that, It's amazing how integral sound is to these kind of experiments and the research on psychedelic therapy. And, probably people are aware of the history, there was a burgeoning kind of like research field back in the sixties of, psychedelics as a, as a therapeutic, treatment for depression and anxiety and other kind of, disorders. But then, through the war of drugs or whatever, the whole research like was just curtailed completely. Yeah. And, but it's in the last 10, 15 years that it started to come back and the regulations have like allowed, some of this research to kinda be rebirthed. And so Imperial College [01:00:00] in London is one of the leading institutions that are like researching and you mentioned Psilocybe, but they're also researching ketamine, MDM a and other kind of, psychedelics, like DMT or whatever. And they have been finding like really fascinating, really kinda positive like results the treatment of, Depression, and other conditions. there are, and, the patients, it's important to say that are, undergoing these trials, they're all kind of treatment resistant, kinda perspec, points of their kind of like their, journey. They've tried everything and they're still suffering and it's really debilitating. So they're ready to try this and it's done in a kind of lab setting, right? So there's, it's in a hospital, there's guides that are trained that are experienced within using these kinda, these medicines. And, the idea is that take quite a big dose of, in, in the cases I've worked on, psilocybins Magic Mushrooms, the synthetic version, and you are in that experience, this [01:01:00] psychedelic state for 6, 7, 8 hours. It's a, it's a pretty long term thing. And in that room you're there and you basically encourage 'em to blindfolded headphones and the headphones would be playing music. And in the trial that I worked on, I was tasked with curating the music for that entire like 6, 7, 8 hours. So that was quite a big responsibility. and I felt like it was a really amazing opportunity to be able to do that because I felt like all of my experiences, and we've talked about quite a lot of them today, have led into me feeling confident enough to be able to deliver on that. because all the stuff around music, science, psychology, curation of music, being able to put myself into other person's shoes, extrapolating my taste, but maintaining a high quality control level. understanding all the sort of sound therapy aspects of like how musical affect brain and body. these are things I can able to channel into this kind of curation process. And it was a fascinating thing to be able to do. [01:02:00] And they, essentially, the way that it works is they set up the six different playlists called phases. and it's everything from the kinda like initial kinda welcoming, grounding to like the kind of the ingestion of the drug to then the, the, onsets kicking into then the, peak and then the, descent after the peak has been hit and then coming out the other side. So I'd take research a lot of the different songs that had previously been used in trials because it's one of those things and it's again, similar to music in my example with music in chops or whatever, in, in commercial spaces. It's just something that everyone does everywhere, plays like music. But has anyone really thought about it? And in this psychedelic space, it seems like all these trials were playing music. There was a kind of. Some studies done like back in the sixties around we're gonna think about a sort of musical methodology to pick these tracks. And there was a couple of things done, but it was very kinda basic things obviously. Then the [01:03:00] prior to that, you have the old musical tradition, the and, the ayahuasca ceremonies and stuff like music as a fundamental, the drumming ceremonies, et cetera, and the iboga thing, in Africa and stuff. So, music is innately this of an integral part of it, but could that then those notions be translated into a playlist with like contemporary songs or whatever, that's, I think the thing that, would be great to kinda research more. and there is more and more research. I mean there's a great company called Way Past that are, focusing on this. Mendel Kalin and his kind of work has been specifically focused on this kind of idea of music for psychedelic therapy. And then you have a much more in the culture space with like people like John Hopkins Yeah. John Hopkins, creating music for psychedelic therapy and album. And anyway, the, so we develop, delivered the playlist with a bit of technology that allows the playlist to be played in this kind of arc, that was represent of the different phases. And, [01:04:00] and yeah, it, music in that kinda space is known as the hidden therapist, so it's theirs, the accompaniment, it's the kind of like the guide through, what for, many people is a transformational, like once in a lifetime experience, up there with the most memorable experiences that we'll all have in their life and the way that it works. Similarly, I think very similar to, as I've described with the sound therapy thing in terms of how confront in this kind of, held space. your, traumas, it's very similar in terms of principles. In the psychedelic space, you're able to, this whole kind of idea of ego death occurs and you're one with the, world, and you can really start to confront maybe your traumas in this kind of space that, that you're more, more safe in, more comfortable in. And then literally, like your brain can have an opportunity to rewire itself. Steve: Neurons completely. Yeah. Yeah. Cases. It's been almost immediate. [01:05:00] Brian: yeah, Exactly. So this, the first study I did was with, chronic pain sufferers, fibroma, fibromyalgia, and then the one that I'm just about to mark on now is with gambling addicts, and they showed me some of the. The FMRI scans of the gambling addict. It's amazing. they had the football Paul Merson arsenal player. And he had this gambling addiction. Yeah. which was kinda well known. So they had him on camera and they'd done these brain scans of him and they were showing him all these photographs of his family or, football stuff or whatever it was. And then they showed him a photo of a betting shop and his brain just lit off in all these different ways where could look at his picture of his wife or his kids or whatever, and it's just oh yeah, whatever this guy. So it was just like, so he was just like, wow, this just shows like how much, like, how, little control I have as an individual, like over, like this behavior that's just that's been baked into my neuro sister, my, [01:06:00] my brain. And Yeah, like that, that needs serious rewiring. And if the psychedelic can help him kinda obliterate that state and help them to kinda go back to very neuroplastic state, something that we experience much more in childhood, but as we get older, become less able to be plastic with our, the way that our neurons fire these, kinda thought processes and patterns become solidified or whatever. so this, psychedelic is a, it is an amazing way to get there. I think you can get there and the point of my interest is can you get there with sound? can you get with sound alone? so you don't need the drug, which is obviously a, a big decision for people to make if they want to do that. and it's definitely not for everyone and it's definitely not gonna work for everyone. I think it's the results that they're finding through the trials are that. For a lot of people, like you mentioned, it can immediately be a, all time cure, right? They're never gonna go back to that addiction or whatever. For some people, there's a relapse, and for some people it doesn't work at all. But [01:07:00] the comparison that they always make in, the talks that I've gone to with this stuff is that the, the, alternative is an SSRI, an antidepressant or whatever it is, and that's not really doing anything to solve the issue, right? It's it's just dampening the, feelings that one might have when they're experiencing that trauma and that's manifesting itself Yes, there's that whole kind of like thing, and that can be very, that can be affected, that can help people manage the pain and the trauma, whatever. But this can be potentially like a one-time solution that can solve it. again, it's not for everyone, but for the people that works for fantastic. and if music can help with that, and actually if music I, part of my interest would be say, can music help in the aftercare of that? So for example, the way that memory works with music, obviously I mentioned right at the start, which was like my formative memories, as a kid was like always with a soundtrack of music. since this is such a formative experience for people with, the psychedelic. [01:08:00] In these psychedelic states, and music is such a crucial part of that. If they were to just play the music, say six months on, 12 months on, they're maybe like in the process of relapsing and you just play the music, they can bring them back and the brain starts to get back into that state, like an Steve: extension. It's just like a, it's, it becomes, yeah, because transformation, sometimes you have a trigger for immediate transformation, but some transformation is over time, so you need that kind of guiding through. That music might be an anchor just to keep. Brian: Giving that memory trigger to bring them back into that place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Steve: We're what, programmable obviously. that's it, that's the thing. Brian: Yeah, yeah. this whole idea of the, the No, you are not like, necessarily there's no kind of self-driving it, it's all these processes that we just are not in control of, it's actually driving it, Amazing. Steve: Amazing. so just to wrap up, Brian, tell me, tell us, just share with us a little bit about what's on the horizon for you at the moment. What's your, what's your general direction without sharing [01:09:00] sensitive information? Yeah, what's, what's, yeah. Brian: I think I'm generally interested in, like the place I'm at is, about trying to give back a little bit. So giving like opportunities to use sound as a means to help people in different ways, and that could be helping people connect with nature and natural world. So I've been doing a lot of stuff in this kind of light with bio sonification. The whole kind of concept is, so that's essentially converting the electrical. Signals that all living things make. Yeah. the electricity bioelectricity and making music from that. So plugging that into a synthesizer and creating soundscapes based on the nature, if it's a plan or fungi or even a human being, like create sounds. so that seems to have been something that's really kinda touched a nerve and hit this kind of cultural zeitgeist as it is right now. and I've been doing projects, with schools, with, mental health charities, but also just creative projects with different brands and stuff.[01:10:00] obviously we met the WXO and we did a bunch of like mushroom breakfasts there. Yeah. Which just, which is really fun as an experiential thing. Yeah. where you're literally. Eating the mushrooms and it's part of your breakfast, but you're hearing the mushrooms play the soundtrack, as you must say, which kind of freaked a few people out. But that connection of the senses is really important. So if I can, and a Steve: connection with nature as well. that was also something I took from that to hear, like of a mushroom sing almost. It was just, it was quite incredible. It was like, oh, I haven't actually seen that before. yeah. But just, to know that we're all alive and part of a bigger system here. Brian: Yeah. I think that kind of thing is really important. Mean the, what the mushroom's actually seeing is the jury is out. And it is, it is a relatively kinda controversial subject to, to touch on. And I acknowledge that, but from a kind of creative kind of angle and this just basic, fundamental kind connection to nature. I think of myself, I spend 15 odd years in nightclubs and whatever, or [01:11:00] working with commercial spaces by, with open air in these built environments. And I had this kind of calling to try and get out of them and into, a more natural kind of world. and I think it's human beings. we've evolved. I haven't evolved necessarily far enough to, exist in these kind of cities and these built up environments, these noisy spaces that we've created for ourselves. So the ability to escape into nature through the vehicle of listening is really important for me. And then also from a kind of creative hat on or whatever is if I can be inspired by nature, and that could be through its electricity, it could be through whatever means. and then channel that through. All my experiences with sound therapy, with, the app technologies we built and experience with music and that can then help other people then that's a fantastic sort space to be. So I'm looking, yeah, I'm just looking for the kind of more creative projects to do these kinda work. This work. Steve: Amazing. look Brian, thank you. Thank you for hosting us. First and foremost. Thank you for inviting us into your studio, [01:12:00] into your space. amazing. and yeah, thank you for, for joining the show. It's been brilliant. I think just to really, learn about your journey and the importance of just sound period. so I love that you bring this kind of your perspective, your experience, your knowledge, and share out to the audience. 'cause I think, I think there's a lot of people listening that don't probably appreciate it as much. And I hope even just, even if it was just for a day to be a little bit more aware of sound in their life on their every day, I think that'd be amazing. Yeah. I've done a good job. Thanks very much. Thanks Brian: very much. Thank you. Thank you. Cheer, Steve: whatever.