No Filler Music Podcast

Our monthly mixtape is back kicking things off with Josh Homme's cover of Paul McCartney's "Lavatory Lil" from the newly released "McCartney III Imagined". We then spend quite a bit of time with a bunch of new tracks from a slew of art-rock / punkish bands from the last few years. And for good measure, we throw in a doom metal, an IDM, and a math rock track just to keep things interesting. Trackli...

When frontman Todd Lewis ventured from Texas to California to record Rubberneck, he fully expected to be back working at the record store in Fort Worth with his fellow bandmates in a year or so. And he was almost right, until "Possum Kingdom" received some airplay on LA's KROQ radio and the album skyrocketed the band into the grunge limelight and cemented this record as a classic from that era. In...

As lead-singer and two-string bass player Chris Ballew once observed of the grunge scene of the early nineties: "I wonder if we could lighten things up a little?" Thus The Presidents of the United States was born, a three-piece rock group from grunge's birthplace with one mission: to make grunge and alt-rock music without the themes of angst, depression, etc. With unforgettable singles like "Lump"...

On this month's edition of Whatcha Heard, we start with the latest single from our favorite disco, electronic, dream pop group Mr. Twin Sister. We keep the flow going with a couple more shoegazey, psychedelic indie rockers but then the inevitable happens when Travis throws in some metal to mix things up a bit. Quentin is still not ready to take the plunge into the deep end of metaldom, and pulls p...

Ambient drone metal, dream sludge, bliss metal: it goes by many names, but one has finally stuck. The term is "doomgaze", and it's exactly what it sounds like: the reverb-drenched guitars and soft dreamy vocals of shoegaze played at the heavy, sludge-like pace of doom metal. That sound goes back much further than you might think, but didn't catch on until the mid 2010s with a steady rise in popula...

A couple weeks ago we pondered the question: what happens when you combine doom metal with shoegaze? Doomgaze is an actual thing, with a history dating back to the 90s and a rise in the mid 2010s. But we'll get into all that next week: on this episode we bask in the shimmering, deafening, lush haze of our favorite subgenre: shoegaze. We pick a few random branches on the shoegaze tree and admire al...

Legend has it that Tony Iommi himself once claimed that Sleep's Holy Mountain was the album that best encompassed the feel and spirit of Black Sabbath's Volume 4. Whether he said it or not is up for debate, but one thing is for certain: Sleep's embrace of the blues-leaning metal style of Sabbath's early sound oozes out of the sludgy, doom-paced stoner metal that Sleep helped define in this seminal...

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That saying certainly applies to the alternative R&B group The Internet. When the members of this group get together to create music, something truly unique happens. Their blend of R&B, hip hop, jazz, funk, and electronic dance music creates a leisurely, smooth, and undeniably cool sound that is unmistakably The Internet. Also unique about this super...

When Ubisoft Montreal went searching for a composer to score Chaos Theory, the third installment of the Splinter Cell video game franchise, they went to the best of the best in Hollywood. This included legendary film composer Lalo Schiffrin, who was behind such scores as Dirty Harry, Bullitt, and Cool Hand Luke. When those plans fell through, Ubisoft turned to then underground producer Amon Tobin,...

The only thing that could thaw the Great Texas Freeze of 2021 is the hottest mixtape since Now That's What I Call Music! Tune in for our 2nd edition of Whatcha Heard, our monthly mix of varied jams from early synth to the one and only William Shatner. Tracklist: Harald Grosskopf - So Weit, So Gut Altın Gün - Ordunun Dereleri Sam Webster - Deep Cuts Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest - Flight Failure...

Before you can truly appreciate Freetown Sound and the message it delivers, you need a little bit of context around the state of the country in the summers leading up to its release. But more importantly, how a very specific incident in Dev Hynes career was the tipping point for an artist at his wit's end confronting the realities of being a black man in America. We break it all down in our look a...

As part of his contract with Warner Bros., Prince was able to recruit and produce his own artists. One of those bands was The Time, formed in 1981 fronted by Morris Day with Jesse Johnson on lead guitar. Based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Time's blend of funk rock with elements of synth-pop and new wave was the origin of what came to be known as the Minneapolis sound. A collection of songs w...

We pull from the No Filler vaults and take a listen to our first dive into hip hop with our episode on The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest. The group emerged from the Native Tongues in the early 90s, bringing with them positive-minded, Afrocentric lyrics and eclectic, unique & jazz-influenced beats. We also take a quick peek at the golden age of hip hop, focusing on New York's hip hop commu...

Every week we both share a song that we heard since the last time we recorded. It's a way to add some variety to the episode, and share some more tunes with our listeners! We called the segment: Whatcha Heard? In 2021, we're trying something new. We're ditching the weekly segment for a monthly episode, where the entire show is dedicated to sharing whatever it is we've been listening to that month....

Our first episode digging into the deeper, darker side of electronic music, we listen to a handful of tracks from UK producer Andy Stott. Leveraging a slew of genres from industrial and ambient to Detroit techno and deep house, Stott's adventurous and experimental sound keeps the listener on her toes throughout his varied and wide-ranging discography. Travis is also convinced that Stott samples a...

When the duo behind Arms and Sleepers sits down to make music together, they typically turn to movies for inspiration. That was the goal for their 2006 debut record Black Paris 86 after all: to make a soundtrack for an imaginary film. The music is both dark and mysterious, but also warm and beautiful. Blending exceptional drumbeats and killer bass lines with glockenspiels and toy pianos, Arms and...

On this week's episode, we dig deep into the No Filler archives and revisit our episode on Brazilian electronic musician Amon Tobin's debut record Bricolage. Unlike most trip hop albums from the nineties, Tobin perfectly blends old jazz samples with a drum and bass backbone, and an IDM sensibility. Dark, moody, and effortlessly cool, this record stands out as a true gem in the field of trip hop. T...

We close out our Best of 2020 episodes with a little help from our friends. We asked our listeners and some No Filler guests from the past to share their favorite tracks of the year with us, and we've narrowed it down to our favorites from the list for this episode. And we end our favorite musical moments countdown with arguably the greatest thing that happened in 2020: the epic drum battle betwee...

To close out our Best of 2020 episodes, we're left with 5 wildly different tracks and a couple of Alice in Chains covers thrown in for good measure. From the demon-crushing metal of Mick Gordon's bombastic Doom Eternal soundtrack to the post-punk emo throwback of Tigers Jaw, we chat about our final favorites from this crazy year. Tracklist: Mick Gordon - The Only Thing They Fear Is You (DOOM Etern...

On perhaps our most eclectic set of tunes so far in our year-end batch of episodes, we bring everything from 70s-inspired dance/funk indie pop to songs that make you stop and reflect on the human experience world around you in this crazy year we've all been through together. Tune in to hear our next 5 picks from our Top 20 Tracks from 2020. Tracklist: Laura Marling - Only The Strong Tall Black Guy...

On part 2 of our look back at some of our favorite tracks from the year, we've got a more eclectic (some would say more psychedelic leaning) batch of songs. From an artist that headlined Lollapalooza to a couple of artists that make video-game inspired lo-fi vaporwave, we're confident you'll hear some tunes you missed on this crazy roller-coaster of a year. Tracklist: Kiaron; IRSE! - An Bat None T...

When it comes to years, 2020 has been a doozy (to put it mildly). And for music lovers like us, the absence of live music has perhaps been the toughest loss from what we know as "normal" to navigate. But music has still been there for us, like the reliable companion it always has been. There has been some amazing music to come out this year, and we're starting off our list of Top 20 of 2020 with p...

When it comes to post-punk and garage-rock from the 2000s, it's hard to pick just one band for a sidetrack episode. So we're doing our first ever Sidetrack Double Feature (don't get too excited). Today we cover a couple tracks from Longwave's The Strangest Things and French Kicks Swimming. Tracklist: Longwave - Wake Me When It's Over Longwave - Exit French Kicks - All Our Weekends Leon Vynehall -...

We've said it before, and we'll probably say it again: the early 00's marked the beginning of our journey as music lovers. And this is right about the time garage rock and the post-punk revival started to really take off. The Stills is just another of the countless "The" bands that hit the scene around that time, but there's just something about their debut record Logic Will Break Your Heart that...

Hot off our White Stripes episode, we went digging through Third Man Record's roster to see what gems we could uncover. The album cover for The Pathetx's 1981 called out to us, begging for a spin. A collection of unreleased material from this classic 80's punk outfit from Detroit, 1981 is eighteen minutes of raw energy that only 80s punk can truly deliver. Tracklist The Pathetx - Piss On My Shoes...