Tout on a tightrope
Rising Perth multi-instrumentalist/producer Sam Tout has released his new single, Along The Tightrope. He chats with BOB GORDON about the song and how work is progressing on his next album.
Your debut instrumental album Just Floating Around come out last year, and it’s still the first half of 2025 and you’ve got new music. You do keep busy, don’t you?
Yeah, I think I said to you then that I was going to give it a break for a while after that album, but it doesn’t take long to sort of get the bug again. And then you start coming up with a few pieces, then you just go down the rabbit hole and keep going until you have an album, really. And that seems to be the way it’s going.
Some of these tracks I sort of was working on before I even finished the last album and that kind of seems to be how it goes. You just keep coming up with ideas, and then put them away, and then they come in handy as time goes on.”
Is it a case that the more you do, the more you keep doing?
Definitely, and I’m finding that I’m learning new things every day about obviously playing music, but also music production, and constantly trying to evolve and get better and just progress and learn as much as I can. I’m always trying to look forward and upwards with what I can do.
So with the experience and having a solo instrumental album under your belt what do you think you learned from the first time around that you’ve taken consciously or otherwise into what you’re doing?
I’ve learned a huge amount actually from doing that. So Just Floating Around was my first real attempt at writing, recording and mixing an album, or a big body of work like that. I am happy with how it came out, but I’ve certainly learned a lot since then. I think one of the main things I’ve learned is that more is not necessarily more. What I’ve been guilty of in the past is adding too many parts and sort of thinking that by having more layers, you’ve got more sound.
But I’ve learned that that’s not really true, because the human ear and brain can only comprehend so much. I’m trying to push the music further and get a bigger sound this time, but I’m being very conscious of leaving more space to sort of let the atmospheric moods breathe and resonate, so you can actually hear everything that’s going on.
“My aim this time is to really be able to hear every individual part clearly and the way I’ve done that this time is by setting myself some rules. On the first album I just did as many tracks as I wanted, I’d have like three different keyboard parts and four guitar parts. On this album there are rules, so there is a limit of two guitar tracks, one keyboard track, bass and drums. That’s it on every song, and then that way it can be faithfully reproduced by a five-piece band. So having set myself those kind of boundaries, I think, has been a really good thing for me, and just sort of working with those limits is sort of forcing me to be a be a better writer and think a bit more creatively, rather than just going ‘more, more, more.’
Also, even just in terms of mixing, I’ve done a lot of research over the last few years, and I think this album is going to sound a hell of a lot better than the first one. I’ll probably say the same thing next time too (laughs).
In terms of setting boundaries are you finding that there’s a sort of liberation in limitations?
Yeah it is true that less is more because if you write three really great guitar guitar parts, and you put them all together, it can be pretty hard to decipher what’s going on, and it sort of becomes ear fatigue. So it’s sort of going, ‘alright, here’s three possible things that can happen. Let’s pick one and just really hone in on that.’ That’s what I’m trying to trying to do this time and I think so far for me and my ears, it’s working.”
The new single Across The Tightrope, in terms of atmospherics and space, does suggest what the title describes, or as much as one could know, unless they were an actual tightrope walker. Tell me about the gestation of the song…
Well, I started with the sort of introductory riff, which has guitars bouncing from left to right, and then that sort of evoked the imagery of what you see on the cover art. I thought, ‘this kind of reminds me of a person walking along a tightrope’ and then that sort of became a bit of a metaphor about balance, risk and navigating life’s delicate and difficult situations and everything that comes with that. I tried to evoke that mood throughout the song.
Like most of the music I write, it came from messing around, coming up with ideas and textures. Then I sort of just step back a bit and go, ‘What is this? What does this make me think about?’ That was the conclusion that I came to and I just sort of followed that idea as far as I could go.
You said before that you didn’t consider yourself a guitarist, would you consider yourself more an instrumentalist?
I think so. That would be a more adequate way of saying it. I’m by no means a shredder or anything like that, and I can’t give you every single scale in the book. A lot of the time my approach is, not that I can sing, but I’ll sort of hum a tune to myself, and then I’ve got to go figure out how to play that on the guitar. So it usually starts in my head, and then my hands have to figure out the rest from there.
Can you see things in terms of what you learnt from your father, the late great guitarist Errol H. Tout, which you saw and picked up, but also things that have been passed on in terms of intuition?
Oh, yeah, 100 percent. I’ve listened to his music extensively. But not only that, just experiencing his way of doing things through life, it’s impossible for it not to rub off on you. A lot of my approach and a lot of my own playing comes from him, for sure. It would definitely be the number one influence in my music for always. That’s always where it starts from. I listen to a lot of other things as well, but I would say that’s definitely the number one influence.