The name Google Earth often sparks imaginings of satellite landscapes and distant trees. But we should all reorient ourselves to make space for the experimental electronica duo, Google Earth.
Still budding from its fresh start in 2021, the skillful collaboration of Jamie Riotto and John Vanderslice illuminates the whirlwind of drug-powered noise that cannot help but drag you into a new musical universe that, at times, resembles the MDMA mania that inspires them.
The magical team began in the breezy hills of Northern California when Riotto joined the team of Vanderslice’s unique analog recording studio, Tiny Telephone. The exploratory spirit that flowed within the studio throughout their 13 years of collaboration, accompanied occasionally by MDMA, influenced a shift in Riotto. Acting as both a producer and Jazz acolyte, he slowly moved away from his focus on jazz and began to cocoon in the unlimited freedom of wacky synths and unchecked impulsivity. Riotto is not the only one who has made a headlong change in his career; Vanderslice has been in the spotlight in recent years for his large leap from strict analog recording to making room and eventually prioritizing digital equipment. Vanderslice asserts that digital recording allows him and Riotto to hone in on the sound itself. To the duo, digital processing erases the limitations of analog recording and lets speedy, free-will take the lead.
Quickness translates to Vanderslice and Riotto’s solo career as well, with Vanderslice releasing his most recent album, Crystals 3.0, in 2023, right after his 2022 release dEATH~bUg. Jamie also recently opened his own studio in LA, Altamira Sound, in 2021.
Despite this, Google Earth has still seen two albums in just two years. Mac OS X 10.11 is Google Earth’s newest album following their 2024 release Street View. John’s wife, Miranda, wrote the lyrics for both, acting as a large musical inspiration for the duo. Still, the closeness of the two albums does not translate to their similarity, with MAC OS X 10.11 introducing new programmable synthesizers, instruments, and beep-beeps.
Graciously giving their time, Vanderslice and Riotto revealed that Google Earth’s atmospheric beats and unique electronica are the workings of two close friends who just so happen to also be talented musicians.
[This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.]
Where are you located, John? Can I call you John?
John: Yeah, that’s great. I live in Haarlem, the Netherlands, with my wife. It’s a small town near Amsterdam.
How’s the music scene there?
John: Oh, it’s terrible. But every place does some things well and some things poorly. The Dutch feel so unmusical to me. Most of our experience is just listening to music in our house anyway, so it doesn’t affect us much. I do find it inspiring here for other reasons.
So you guys are now a sea apart. How has this affected your music-making process?
Jamie: We haven’t made music since John moved, but it’s a recent move. We both have aspirations to make another record, but it’ll definitely be harder.
John: I think the only way it’s possible is if one of us travels. Like if Jamie came here for 10 days we’d jam, make a ton of stuff, then weed through it and build from there and work on it separately. Or I could come to the US for 10 days and finish it.
Jamie: I really want to keep making music. When we finish a record and I listen back after some time, I’m blown away. I just want to figure it out.
John: I agree. My wife and I sometimes take drugs and listen to music for four to three hours and the whole mix will be the best music that we can find.
Who are you largely inspired by, or does your music come out without specific inspirations?
Jamie: We listen to an enormous amount of music. Honestly, Maria—John’s wife—is our curator. She’s the initial filter system because there’s so much. She’ll send me things to listen to and they’ll be the coolest things I’ve never heard of. I’m also inspired by a lot of jazz, classical, and more recently electronic music. I would like to say that drugs were a big part of that – they changed the music I wanted to hear. I was never drawn to electronic music before.
Any specific type of drug?
John: For us it was mostly MDMA. That drug seemed to rewire our brains in terms of wanting to hear digital, crackly music. It’s pure music, where vocals can be devalued and the rhythmic information becomes more important. We’d have MDMA parties where Maria would start playing these playlists of new things she found in the past two weeks. Jamie and I would be rolling and very open in a way you never could. You can’t otherwise listen to songs for four hours straight.
Jamie: I think contextually, one of the things that was so profound is that I worked with John. He owns a studio called Tiny Telephone.
How long did you work there?
Jamie: For 13 years, I was working on tape machines and large format consoles making experimental music. We would push each other to make this kind of music that was so far removed from jazz. It was like seeing an alien coming at you. But when you’re on MDMA, it sort of opens you up and you become innately curious.
John: Every time we’d do this, Maria would put crazier stuff on the playlist. The first time you hear Arca, you’re like, what is going on?
So, when you’re creating, are you also tripping or rolling, or just focused on the music?
John: It’s too hard. I’ve never actually smoked pot and recorded. Jamie, did you know that?
Jamie: You should try it—it’s fun.
John: I don’t like marijuana. I think the drug experiences that we have are so intentional. It’s not like we’re routinely just taking drugs. It’s an every two month experience where we would have this very intentional, deeply profound experience. Then we’d go back to the reality of living life and being pretty integrated into society.
Jamie, I know you’ve kind of moved away from jazz and classical music, but how do you think that time spent dedicating yourself to jazz has influenced the way you produce music?
John: You know, what’s interesting about jazz is that I’m so influenced by it. I listen to it maybe more than anything for the past -30 years of my life or so. Yet I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with making it. My favorite jazz was made in 1963 to 1968. I don’t want to make something that the best people made 80 years ago. The interesting thing about Google Earth is that it feels like the first time I’ve ever made music that incorporates the things that I like about jazz. The freedom of improvisation and discovery in music making with a pretty wide open palette, but it doesn’t sound derivative of jazz at all. There’s a spirit of jazz in there.
John, how does it feel to work with someone who has that different experience? Do you come together to think about what you’re going to do when you jam out?
John: First off, I make better music with Jamie. It’s very easy for me to defer to him because he’s used to being a producer and steering sessions and directing in subtle and also direct ways.
Jamie: You’re also that.
John: Yeah, I guess that’s fair too. We’ll be in a room and we’ll be messing around and then we’ll just be constantly talking. We’re not anxious.
Jamie: We’re just jamming in John’s backyard.
John: I think that there’s so much connection and back and forth editing that’s happening before you’re even committed to ideas.There’s so much quality control, even when we’re making the goofiest ass music. There’s moments I call our music insane. We have four times as much material that is just terrible. Our friend would call it stabbing in the dim.
Jamie: The process that we’ve landed on is that John and I will jam together in a pretty open, free way. In a typical week, maybe we’ll do like three of those. They will take two hours to even sequence out and develop,and then we record it and we don’t really think about it. We do the next one and separately start listening and zeroing in on the ones that are worth pursuing. Once we zero in on those we start overdubbing them and then the songs really take shape in the overdubbing process because before that they’re this weird thing. It’s like a coloring book and we’re deciding what to color.
John, you did Emerald City based on the Wizard of Oz, and you do things that seem to be grounded in reality. I was wondering if you were trying to say something to Mac or technology through this album?
John: Well, Maria does all that. Maria came up with the artwork, she did the lyrics. And then she also titled it.
John calls out to Maria off camera: “When did we ask you?”
John: I think we asked Maria for a title, and within an hour, she said, how about “for Mac OS X 10.11. I thought it was insanely funny. I think that Maria just sent an album cover that said it was for Mac OS X 10.11. I said that’s sick. I had zero say in it, which I think illustrates how much we trust her. It got pulled off of Apple music because they didn’t like that it was Mac OS. So then Maria did a separate upload for apple music retitling it “for windows 7.” I think it’s the funniest shit.
If it’s not for Mac, then is there a story you were trying to tell? Within the lyrics, is there an intentional narrative?
Jamie: In terms of the titling stuff… This is really dumb but we honestly thought the band name Google Earth was just funny. There’s so much music in the world and we don’t have any visions of grandeur. We’re just making music because we like it and because it’s fun. Then we thought Street View – our last record – was funny. Our titles make us giggle.
John, who creates the lyrics? I know for all your solo work you take the reins, but with Google Earth you seem to have let loose a little?
John: In general, Maria writes the lyrics. There’s a beautiful song on Street View that Jamie wrote the lyrics for. But, I think that one thing that you are getting to is that there are a lot of computer centered lyrics or lyrics that are in the mode that makes sense with the titles, with the covers, with the absurdity of a car parked in just a weird parking lot with a flash on it or, you know, a weird flash on our faces with a reference to an operating system. Maria writes lyrics for my own solo stuff now too because – and Jamie and I talk about this – writing lyrics is so unbelievably slow. It stalls the creative process. Having lyrics made for you clears a path. I could wake up and say, Maria, I need a lyric by tomorrow and she could do it. That’s the thing, electronic music is so appealing to Jamie and me because it’s fast. The thing that Jamie and I wanted was the speed of all of these electronic artists – Arca put out five records in basically a month. Honestly, we’d still be working on the Google Earth follow-up without someone writing lyrics for us. Also, the thing that would happen with Maria is that she would give me a notebook filled with little ideas, paragraphs and verses which allowed us to have a little bit more distance in writing while still contributing. So, I’m not embarrassed or worried. I could just pick and choose and add on. It accelerated what Jamie and I did so we could stay inspired. We didn’t want it to be like what Jamie was talking about, when we were working on tape decks and shit would take forever. It was such an old, archaic, linear way of making music. And I think Google Earth is faster and smarter.
Jamie: I think in that linear format, it was really cool. We learned a ton from doing that, definitely. But at a certain point, the experience of listening to the electronic music on Molly made me think there are no limitations in the way that this music is made. Why would I work with such a crazy limitation on the music that I’m making? For me, Google Earth has been — if nothing else — it’s been making music without any real limitations.
If there’s no limitations, how do you decide when and where to incorporate something that’s not electronic, like your saxophone in Street View. How do you decide when and where to incorporate things that are more realized and linear?
Jamie: I think that for us it’s very important because it helps to contrast the sort of sterile nature of electronic music. I think that we both are really drawn to that collision of worlds where it’s an acoustic guitar with a drum machine which is something very simple but it creates music that’s sort of in the middle.
Did you play the saxophone on the kill screen?
Jamie: Oh no, I wish. That’s John Johnson, an amazing sax player in LA.
John: Jamie hooked that one up. He’s a real session player.
Jamie: I see him all the time. You see a lot of talented musicians constantly in SoCal.
I see. Considering the different instruments used in your new album, do you guys think you came into it with a different intention than you did with Street View?
John: I think it’s so casual for us that it’s so much more about joy. I think there was probably an idea that it would have to be different just because it’s different. We knew that it would have a different vibe. One thing is that I engineered some of the first record in a very very half-assed manner because we didn’t really know that we were making a record. So, I think that the thing for me is that I wanted whatever I engineered to be more responsibly recorded.
Jamie: Yeah, for Mac OS we knew we were making a record whereas with Street View we didn’t know. Also, I haven’t realized this until this moment, but I think the actual tools that we used – there was a lot of overlap – but in the first record the arp 2600 is all over it because we were super fascinated with it. On Mac OS, we use the Yamaha CS60.
John: Yeah, a huge part.
Jamie: And the Pulsar 23, which we didn’t have, is all over. On a home computer, the beeping thing that just repeats over and over is this modular drum machine that John has called the Pulsar 23.
Jamie: It’s just that we didn’t have that and then for the second record we have it and it’s all over the record. It’s a whole different thing. It’s interesting because those two instruments are really huge parts of the record than they were in Street view.
In “endless corridor“, there’s a little scene inserted from Deadwood, a very popular show. Why did you put that there?
John: I heard it on a podcast called Blowback – Jamie loves Blowback. It’s a podcast about American strategy.
Jamie: It’s about American imperialism and the downfall, the downsides, and the dark side of American imperialism.
John: I heard that clip on one of the episodes, and I thought it was insane. I knew that with the screaming and the wahhhhh, I knew that that would go into a song really well. I said, I’m going to record this off my phone and throw it in and see where it sticks.
When you’re inserting things like that, do you test locations?
John: I have a cable that comes out of my computer and I’ll play a documentary – like a Maisel’s brother documentary – over a whole song and keep restarting it to see where it fits. Sometimes all you keep in is maybe someone’s footsteps down a corridor and you’re like, Oh my God, that sounds incredible right here. It’s kind of the icing on the cake stuff that I do at the end, but I really love to put in a little bit of noise. Jamie and I are always fighting that sterility that he mentioned before of all these very digital very clean instruments. They need a little bit of texture and some noise.
Jamie: I think it’s worth mentioning that John, at certain points with the songs, is so good at singing and turning things into a song. I’ll be at my studio making other music totally unrelated while he’s in the studio. Then, the next time I come over, he plays it for me and he’s added 14 vocal tracks and a sample from a podcast. It’s amazing because the last time I heard it, it was just a suggestion of something and all of a sudden it’s focused into a song and I had nothing to do with it. Then I can take it and involve myself from there. But it’s really cool.
John: We’re a team, man. We are a team. I want Jamie to come here and stay with me and me for 10 days and record. It’d be so fucking fun.