Behind the Tapes: Rival Consoles in conversation with Daniel Brandt

It’s hard to pinpoint what Daniel Brandt and Ryan Lee West aka Rival Consoles don’t talk about during their chat together. The two friends quickly dive into talking about their new albums, Without Us and Landscape from Memory, respectively, recording processes: composing in different environments, the importance of avoiding studio pressures, and exploring ideas without having to feel ‘ready’. They touch on how “dreaming alongside the computer” can feel more alluring than the time pressures of studio work and how using your past self’s recordings can feel a lot like time travel. 

At times, their conversation takes on a philosophical bent. Is spending a long time on a record a luxury in a time when making social media content helps you stay more visible as an artist online? In asking this question, they discover common ground on the importance of staying in the creative flow state when everyone is so switched on to social media.

They also debate the complexities of electronic music’s live performance, including its illusions, tricks and the ‘honesty’ of it compared to a traditional performance. 

Finally, Brandt and West talk about touring, residencies and how working in different spaces can lead to inspiration. This comes back full circle to their first discussion, where Ryan eagerly asks Daniel about his experiences working in the Californian desert…

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. An edited version of the conversation can be heard here. 

Ryan Lee West: So, your album was made in a desert?

Daniel Brandt: Well, it was kind of made in a desert, but also not made in a desert. It started there.

RLW: OK. Because that’s already a very interesting story, since most records are made in a studio in quite a boring way.

I don’t really like to work in a studio that much to be honest. I always feel a bit claustrophobic or it doesn’t feel very inspiring. A studio is great if you know what you’re doing and want to finish something. But for a starting point, I don’t know many studios that can provide that. 

RLW: Yeah, there’s a pressure as well because as soon as you walk into a studio, it feels like you should be making music. Whereas when you’re away from a studio, you can just be exploring ideas and there’s no pressure to conform to a finished product.

DB: Also in a studio it almost feels like people are judging you, or the music has to be perfect already. Like you have to come in and everything is rehearsed. Then you miss out on all the weirdest takes you could possibly make, or dare to make them, because there’s someone watching through a glass window.

RLW: [Laughs] That makes a lot of sense. My way of making basically, because it’s just me, there’s no pressure. I’m allowed to just make weird sounds for three hours. There could be a terrible idea one moment and the next where it’s usable and interesting to me. But in a studio you would feel bad constantly wandering through bad things or un-useful things. 

DB: It’s almost like a performance, already. Even if no-one cares, whatever. It is a bit like that. Because everyone is thinking “what can this guy do?”

RLW: It’s a weird pressure that I’ve escaped from. Because I could have gone down a more traditional path as a musician, as a guitarist. But as I started working with computers, I think I just fell in love with the fact that I can just dream alongside the computer. And you don’t have to worry about traditional musical values or performance. You are creating the illusion of performance a lot of the time, which is good and bad.

DB: Sometimes you can go through several phases. You can have an ideas phase where you make all the mistakes, then it becomes something. Then, in my case, I often get together with people and re-record everything. Then it becomes a ‘thing’, and then we are actually in the studio. But sometimes, the original stuff is so good that you don’t want to replace it.

RLW: There’s a weird aspect to re-creating and re-recording ideas that the general public probably don’t know about. You don’t know what instance it is of the idea. And often, we don’t. So there’s a mystery there in the making of music. Especially with modern production, because you could have something extremely modern with an element that’s five years old. And you wouldn’t necessarily know. 

But that probably wasn’t the case in the era of recording bands to tape, because it would be expensive. You would just try and get it done in a week, if you were lucky. And that was it. So we live in a weird luxury that you can mess around with time. The recordings of things from different points in time. Especially me actually, some of my pieces of music were started six years ago, and then looked at three years later, then one year later. 

DB: So you also use elements of older ideas and put them into new ones?

RLW: Yeah! I don’t want to do that necessarily, it just happens. 

DB: I love that! It’s so cool because it’s like you can travel back in time, in a sense, and see all these amazing ideas, everything else might be crap from that session but you can put it in there.

RLW: That’s what’s going on. But because I make so much stuff, it’s like I’m going through somebody else’s computer. If I open a project file from 2018, I’ll be finding things that surprise and interest me. 

DB: Yeah, because you can’t even remember! It almost feels like you’re stealing. 

RLW: Like sampling from somebody else, but it is still you.

DB: You already have the licence!

RLW: Exactly, you have the licence. There’s something interesting about that, I don’t know if other people work like that but computers naturally give way to working like that I think. 

DB: Especially Ableton because it doesn’t really matter what tempo anything was recorded in, or which tuning, so you can just take it and add it to the session with a few little tweaks. It’s already running. I sometimes do a workshop for students where we do a session where we record whatever everybody’s recording, then we make a little track – maybe a one-minute thing. Then we take a break and make something different at the end of the whole workshop. We then put it together and try to prove every time that you can do completely different things, and that they can still work.

RLW: Good idea! That’s a nice exercise. I mean, I’m kind of doing that unconsciously a little bit, as I’m constantly doing procedures without thinking.

DB: I call it ‘forced coincidence’.

RLW: ‘forced coincidence’! That’s nice. I like that. I tend to work on things for a really long time. I don’t want to, by the way. I would love for things to just happen in a way that I like immediately, but I could spend 1000 hours on a transition. 

DB: That’s definitely audible in your music!

RLW: I hope it isn’t! 

DB: [Laughing] It does feel like you need a long time, but it feels very well-made, you know? It doesn’t feel like you’ve just dropped some stuff somewhere, and it’s done.

RLW: Well, hopefully. Because the weird thing is – the song Catherine on the record, that was started five years ago but it’s super minimal. It was just made as a sketch, just a drum groove that’s incredibly simple and this very sparse melody. It’s almost falling apart, because it’s not super produced. But it’s funny that thousands of hours have gone by on that, and I’ve just allowed it to be that vulnerable. Instead of making it heavier and more dense, and more packed with things.

It’s a risk, but it seems to work especially live I think, because it can just breathe on the sound system. This is versus a tendency of a lot of electronic music which is to sound huge. Because that’s impressive. This means, though, there’s no space for you to wander in the idea. 

DB: It’s always good to leave space. I’m sometimes good at it, sometimes not good at it. With old Brandt Brauer Frick records we were really good at it, keeping everything sparse, then we forgot about it for a while. We’re actually working on a new album right now where we’re back to that mode. We spent four hours just recording one little sound, and making it perfect. Then we have the perfect sounding sound and then just put that somewhere. It’s great, it’s fun. 

We didn’t want to go for that for a while, but we realised we wanted to go back to that. With my stuff, though, I tend to fill stuff up quite a bit. But I do spend a long time on things – I spent five years on my album. I also spent a lot of time just not checking it out. That helps a lot. That’s something I’ve learned in the last few years: taking a step away and then re-approaching it. It’s almost like – as you’ve said before – almost like looking at something that’s not yours. Then, you can easily judge it and ‘kill your darlings’ so to speak, and remove what’s not necessary. 

RLW: That’s interesting, because it’s kind of the opposite of the current music industry. It’s obsessed with releasing content non-stop, in order to capture the attention of the audience on social media. Whereas what we’re describing is a long process over five years. 

I’m wondering if young people who are making music are allowed to be like that? Or whether they have to keep smashing out content. Is it a luxury to do that?

DB: I mean, also, the crazy thing is that now you basically have to document yourself while you’re making it. That’s impossible for me. When I’m in a state of making something, I’m in the zone. I don’t want people to see me! I can’t imagine, at the same time, going ‘Hey guys! I’m in the studio’.

This is tough, because it’s expected of us in some way or form to constantly come up with stuff that’s being put onto the pile of things which are out there. Just another person saying where they are and what they’re doing. The whole mystery is gone. 

I love that in the late 90s when I was going into record stores, sometimes the only thing you’d know about the people behind a record was one photo of the band and a little text. And then you would imagine while listening to it what sort of people they were. I always thought they were magical, next level people. In reality, they are just normal people, but now it’s obvious. It’s too much information.

RLW: Yeah I agree. Mystery is definitely lacking, and it’s hard to see a way for it to change. Because everyone’s playing this game to an extent. But I guess Billie Eilish is quite mysterious, and that’s part of her success. That’s hopeful, since she’s a super young artist, who is quite mysterious within the realm of social media. 

A lot of the people I look up to are definitely more on the weird side of things. I’m not very present online at all. I wonder if there’s going to be an era of celebrating that again. People must get tired of the same things over and over again. I wonder if there’s going to be an anti-movement.

DB: I think that people are already into that idea. It’s just that you won’t see the celebration because it’s not televised. How can you like the thing that’s not there? Nobody sees it.

RLW: It’s kind of like a negative space in an image, where it’s present but it’s not the focus sometimes. 

DB: Nobody can say publicly, ‘Oh, I love your non-post!’

[Laughing]

RLW: That’s an interesting point. 

DB: But of course, in the creative process, I find this very distracting. That’s why, for example, I go to places like the desert and I’m actually offline. I just don’t connect with the world. This desert in California is good because it’s in a different time zone. So for me, after a certain time in the day, nobody gets in touch any more because they’re all based in Europe. That’s very useful. 

RLW: I like this. I should try to do this. 

DB: You can get into a weird headspace because you’re really on your own in a crazy landscape. The last time I did that there was a little old radio in the place I was staying and I was listening to the station that was playing the charts from the 80s. I was feeling like I was in a different time altogether! 

RLW: That’s a good idea. 

Maybe you want to talk about some of the processes on your album that people don’t know about? Because for people who don’t know: you’re a drummer, a percussionist, but you obviously play multiple instruments.

DB: I started the record without any drums. 

RLW: That’s why I asked, because I thought that might be the case. 

DB: The only thing I had was one phone recording of a drum session that I recorded on the side, while recording for Friedburg. I just had this as a loop. I recorded additional percussion parts using things I found in the desert. Later on, I recorded drums and everything in the studio, but there I just actually borrowed a guitar and a bass from a friend, and got two synthesisers. That was it.

RLW: So some of those parts are recorded later on in the studio?

DB: No, then I did a whole week of recording sessions together with Anne Müller, Pascal Bideau and Florian Juncker . I took an element from each track and made it longer. Then, we just recorded long drones which I conducted sometimes. Or, we created an idea of how it should evolve. The drone sessions were always about half an hour on one track or something. We did that for a whole week. 

I just had this material and then I threw it into the songs in certain places.

RLW: So you’re creating ingredients that can be used later.

DB: Yeah, sometimes a bit orchestral, sometimes a bit more dark, drony etc. 

RLW: The record’s got quite a dark feel throughout, I think. But I wonder what makes it so? The note choices create a lot of tension.

DB: It’s more the tension I would say. Because harmonically, it’s sometimes more melancholic or even more on the brighter side sometimes. But I think it’s more the density or the urging.

RLW: Wanting to release and resolve, maybe? I guess you do that harmonically and also rhythmically. 

So I was lucky to see you at the Barbican with Fabian [Prynn]. For people who don’t know, that was two drummers, although one is playing more of a supporting percussion role. 

DB: There was a switch between drummers as well.

RLW: OK. The reason I mentioned it is that in the album, and in the recording of it, do you think of it as being two drummers or do you think of it being a more complex part for one player?

DB: I always thought about it as a joint thing. Not necessarily two drum sets together, but more like a setup which is a hybrid between percussion and drums. That’s always how I see it.

Fabian did this cool thing, he came up with the idea of mic’ing the drums, or having one mic that he can move around which is connected to a guitar amp which has a spring reverb and we could record it from there. 

Actually, he made it sound like all the percussion sounds that I have on the record, because I ran them all through my Space Echo, so it has this certain recorded sound. He made this happen onstage, which I was super happy about.

RLW: That’s something you could probably explore just on its own. Just two drummers onstage for a performance, with these effects just to see what could happen from an improvisation. I’d love to see that. 

DB: Totally.

RLW: It’s amazing how when you’re making music, and a long time goes by, and then right at the end someone does something, and you think ‘I could have done that!’

DB: It always happens! It happens with Brandt Brauer Frick all the time, because we make the record, then start rehearsing it together, and then we start touring. Halfway through touring we realise ‘Damnit! This could have been a better song!’. Because at that point you start to realise what the key thing of each song is. But that’s why this time with this new album we’re doing it the other way round. We’re only doing the records ourselves, then rehearse it with an ensemble, then we record it, and then already play it. So it’s already the live version. It takes longer!

RLW: That makes sense, because you can’t always understand how things function until you put them into different contexts like a venue. Because something that sounds interesting in a studio could be absolutely sterile in a venue. And the opposite, sometimes. Something uninteresting in a studio can be really exciting in a venue. It’s this constant mess of perception!

DB: Your album, I would say, is more on the positive, melancholic side, which I really enjoy.

RLW: Yeah some people have said that! It is quite optimistic, I think, for me. I’ve never really done super dark records apart from ‘Overflow’, which was a score. It’s because I always like blending a sense of hope and euphoria. 

DB: But this one sounds specifically hopeful, I’d say.

RLW: It’s not intentional, I don’t think. It’s kind of against the chaos of the actual world. It does seem very colourful and vivid. Maybe optimistic is the wrong word, but hopeful works.

DB: A hopeful melancholy. It’s like looking back at a nice time. 

RLW: I’m sure after this I’ll probably go back to sounding more melancholy. 100 percentage melancholy. 

DB: What’s the percentage now?

RLW: The percentage is probably 40% I think. 

DB: But it does get heavy sonically at points, which is great.

RLW: I’m trying to remember where though.

DB: Where it’s just a bass and a beat.

RLW: I see what you mean! 

DB: If you played that live, then it would be super heavy.

RLW: Definitely.

DB: Because there’s just not that many elements in there.

RLW: It could be quite impactful. I’ve actually been playing a lot of it live. Usually, I don’t play a new record live for a long time. It takes me years to start playing new stuff. I sometimes feel like it doesn’t necessarily work straight away. 

DB: So you start playing the new stuff when you’re already on the next album?

RLW: For example, one piece of music took me seven years to play! It’s been in the set for a long time now. But it took me seven years to feel like it should be there. That’s how extreme things are. However, with this album, five pieces have gone straight into the live set, so I must have felt more confident about how they’d sound in the live set. 

I never assume that something that works on an album would naturally work in a live set. 

DB: I felt like when I was listening to your new album, that a lot of this should work in that setting.

RLW: I was sort of considering that in the making a little bit. But I never know as I find with electronic music, especially because there’s no voice for me, it’s so abstract that you don’t always understand how it will behave. This is especially true amongst other music as well. 

For example, I’m constantly changing tempo, versus someone who makes techno or house where there’s a consistency. Every piece of music’s a different tempo, and each piece has usually been a different tempo throughout my career really. 

That can create lots of problems, as one piece can undermine the tempo and energy of another piece. Because of this, it can get quite difficult to construct a live set in a way. But the new album seems to naturally work – I’m not sure why!

DB: Are you playing them in the same order as on the record?

RLW: No – everything’s different. It’s all to do with the fact that I build a lot of transitional material, as well as improvising live, to make it work. The order is dictated by the material, not really by the album. There have been shows in the past where I have played pieces together that were together on the record. That’s as much as it’ll ever be, though. 

Playing live has gotten better, I think, and it’s taken a long time. Because electronic music’s such a bizarre thing compared to traditional performance. Over the years, I’ve tried to piece together a kind of through-line that makes sense: it’s how I make music in the studio but it’s also how it translates live. It’s not easy to do. 

There are some people who completely go against this, for example Fred Again or A.G. Cook, they sometimes just turn up with CDJs and have fun. There’s no pressure that somebody should have to recreate the ideas live. But for some reason, I’ve always felt like I should. That can be good and bad. 

I believe there are a lot of creative things that are undiscovered in the performance aspect of electronic music. 

DB: Yeah, because sometimes you can’t really tell from the audience what someone’s actually doing. That’s always the hard part.

RLW: And there’s a chaos to it really. Take for example Autechre – who are doing a lot actually – they’re playing in darkness. They’re probably doing more than most people are doing in electronic performances, but it’s completely invisible. 

Obviously, that’s a concept where you’re asking the audience to attempt to discover something completely new. Because it’s outside what they expect. I’ve never been that conceptual, because I always feel like there’s a lack of honesty in electronic music. That’s purely subjective – it’s not even true. But it feels like there is. 

So when you perform live, I feel like you’re trying to communicate some truth to the music, in a weird way. 

DB: What do you mean by honesty in electronic music, like on the performance side or in the actual music itself?

RLW: Sometimes in the music in itself, because often what you’re trying to do is recreate the illusion of performance, with tricks and devices.

DB: Everything is tricks.

RLW: Yeah, true.

DB: A guitar lick is also a little bit of a trick!

RLW: I mean in a way, what I mean is that electronic music is quite mysterious. Because when you’re listening to electronic music, even if you’ve spent a long time with it and know a lot about production, you can’t always work out how they’ve done something. 

I don’t think it’s always important to reveal things, but I like to show that there is a performance aspect within the music, in quite a traditional way live – I’m playing parts. 

DB: It also probably feels good for you to do it since you’re actually playing it and you’re not just checking that everything is running.

RLW: Kind of.

DB: Actually, in 90s electronic performances, there was someone in Berlin who would put the laptop onstage, press play, and then leave again. Very honest!

RLW: I like all the variations that exist. And of course, this looks towards the very modern era of watching DJs, whereas in the past the DJ was in the background and people would be dancing, they just wouldn’t be the focus. Now, the DJ is the focus, sometimes more than anything else. 

For a long time, I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to play in the darkness, almost like traditional DJs would, where they are in a booth. I don’t know about the future, though, because I could easily go back to being more hidden and it being more conceptual. 

It’s fun to do that, I think, because it changes people’s perceptions of the music. Because obviously if people can see something, they listen differently. If they can’t see you, they just focus on the music.

DB: The most extreme would be a live show or DJ set from Tale of Us, this huge production where everyone has their phone out. Everyone is there just for the sensation. It’s like a Las Vegas show, so to speak. The opposite would be Underground Resistance DJing somewhere, and nobody knowing what they look like. 

The question is now with phones, because people are so addicted to their phones, you can get the perception yourself that the moment hasn’t happened if you didn’t record it and haven’t posted it. So you’re almost living through your phone, as a filter for the real world. 

RLW: I’ve been to a lot of shows recently where there was very little phone usage. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or if there are a lot of people who are not interested.

DB: Maybe it’s not so much of a problem any more. I was also at a few shows recently where I didn’t see anyone taking out their phone, and it was quite a big show.

RLW: It’s good. I saw Four Tet play in London not so long ago, like a one-off five hour DJ set. You’d think that would be the most phone-filmed thing! But it wasn’t at all – I saw about five instances of people on their phone over five hours. 

DB: Maybe it’s over?

RLW: Well, I don’t know. We should bury this in a time capsule, and people can dig it up in 100 years and go – ‘they were wrong, though!’

Technology obviously does dictate everything that we’re doing, though. So you can never escape the awareness of it. Although, you did go to the desert so you tried to escape. 

DB: I’ve tried to escape many times! I even went on a trip once without a smartphone and just a typewriter, but then I realised that I can’t book a hotel. You can’t just walk up to a hotel and book one. Suddenly, the world doesn’t function any more without that. Last time, I took a smartphone but I only had Google Maps. Because I need that!

RLW: I should try and do this, a self-imposed residency where I am away from everything. 

DB: I’m going to do this again this year, twice. One time in Athens, that’s the usual place that I go to, but also in China. We’re doing a little tour in China and then after that, I’m doing two DJ sets. The last one is in a place called Dali. It’s a beautiful place and I’m going to spend a whole week there. Our booking agent and tour manager will probably leave early and I’ll just be there on my own. This will be fascinating as nobody there speaks English. 

RLW: Is that in nature or in a city?

DB: It’s in nature, but there’s a big city nearby. In China, it’s really a small town but for us it’d be a big city.

RLW: Yeah, because they have megacities there, don’t they. I should definitely do this.

DB: I suggest if you’re going to an interesting place, just to add some more days since you’re already there. 

RLW: It gives you the chance to just see what you can do. Because you’re going to be in a different mindset. I did make a lot of this album moving around on tour, in tour vans, constantly sketching stuff out. Two pieces were made at a residency in Lisbon. I don’t expect to make something I like or care about in these moments, but I’m always in the habit of making. It just turned out that a lot of things I made while travelling did get onto the album.

Apart from this Lisbon residency, I’ve never done a proper one for a long time. It felt like it was only a few days that I actually made anything. Because I’ve always lived in quite cramped conditions, I feel like my choices as an artist are quite cramped. I’m always longing to make things vast.

Even though this is subjective, I guess, I imagine if you grew up in Iceland, there’s a chance you already think in quite a big, minimal, open way, versus if you grew up in Brooklyn. I’m curious to go somewhere really open to see if it would influence even just the structure of my music, or even the positioning of elements in my music. 

DB: Maybe you just need the longing for the space, and not the space, because that can also be good motivation. 

RLW: I tried to do this, but I’m unconsciously influenced by the environment that I’m in. I’ve only ever had a studio that’s a few metres squared, and never an external one. So I think I should try going somewhere more vast, especially with the world being so wild at the minute. It’s too much, isn’t it?

RLW: Maybe we could talk about the film aspect of your album?

DB: The film is one thing together with the album, and was developed at the same time. This was a new process for me, as at the same time as writing the script I started making the music. And so the music was there already before the film. It was quite important to get the film done because the people who got involved in everything could already picture something because of the music I gave them. That actually helped the whole process. Obviously it was super complicated to get a film made in terms of production, money, all these things. It’s just a crazy endeavour. 

But it happened, and I was super happy we could make it together with Anthony Dickinson, who did your new video. 

RLW: Yeah, he’s a previous neighbour, friend, who has worked with a lot of people, including ourselves but also people that we know. There are so many overlapping circles of people. I’m just thinking, would you call your album a concept record though? Because you could quite easily describe it as a concept record. 

DB: I knew it was from the beginning.

RLW: OK, because sometimes that word can put people off – they start to think of prog rock albums!

DB: In this case, the concept of it was just environmental problems. You could say it was more like the thought behind everything. When I was making the music I wasn’t always consciously thinking about plastic waste. But I already had in mind what the film’s feeling would be. 

When I was in the process of preparing the live show, I made a new version of the film removing all the music, because in the live show, we don’t play music at the same time. It’s more like it continues after the scene and prolongs the whole thing. It was at that moment that I realised the whole film is better without music.

I composed the score itself and the other pieces on the album. But I removed all the music, and sent it to the producers, saying ‘Hey, I think it’s better without music!’. So I kind of got rid of my own job!

RLW: But does that mean it changed the duration of the piece? Because you’re kind of adding these vignettes between scenes of music. You could think of it as music between scenes or scenes between music. 

DB: Exactly, that’s what it is. I wanted to prolong the feeling you have in the last bit of the scene, or show you what’s going to come next in terms of feeling. But it’s not like a score, it’s more like everything has its own right to be there. So the music can take over much more, unlike with scoring, where you have to be quite minimal and careful. It’s a weird dance around nothing and something. But if you leave the room for the feeling of the music between the scenes, then you suddenly have more possibilities to express something. 

This is just for the live performance though. The original film has no music any more, it just has one little song. That’s its own entity. But the long version only works live. Because you can’t really make an online version. Of course, you could make a concept version with scenes in between, but it’s not very watchable.

RLW: It’s a unique experience really, because firstly, you don’t really see a band or musical artist perform with this cinematic aspect in such an extreme way. Of course, we’re used to seeing music with visuals all the time but this is like a different aspect of that. Which makes it exciting as it’s not very common.

DB: I’m working on a different project like that. It’s my new format, but I still have to find a name!

RLW: It must be an exhausting format for you, as it involves having to figure out these giant worlds. Because music alone is a huge world. 

DB: Actually, I find it more comfortable like that, because I always get ideas for stories when I make music like that, and vice versa. So with this, I can just go into the whole thing, and throw around ideas. 

My new project involves working with thousands of photographs that I got from my late uncle, and I’m building a film out of that. The great thing about this is that it’s already shot, so I can piece it together while I’m making it.

RLW: So it’s like stop-motion?

DB: Not really stop-motion, more like a photo film. Very very slow. Some moving images but not really.

RLW: And that’s obviously in development?

DB: It’s going to take a bit of time!

RLW: So are you working on that in China?

DB: Exactly, I’ll be in China. 

RLW: Yeah, it’s good to keep moving around, experiencing different things. Your last album was the ‘desert’ album, you could have the ‘mountain’ album.

DB: At the end of this recording process, I went to SXSW and took a trip to Colorado. There I booked an Airbnb in the mountains but I didn’t realise it has a super high altitude. So on the first day I thought I had a hangover from the festival. But the next day, I was still super tired all the time and barely managed to work. Then I realised I was at 3,000 metres altitude. I also tried to cook food and everything took so much longer because there are different boiling points. So I went to the town a little bit further down, had a pizza there, and everything was fine!

RLW: That’s a beautiful fable! You went down into a lower altitude to have a pizza and everything worked out. That’s some good advice there.

DB: So lesson learned, pizza and low altitude is good.