A few folks have recently been discussing the sample heard at the end of Heart is a Drum, one of the most popular tracks on Beck’s latest record, Morning Phase. It has been suggested that the sample may be the same Thomas Hendrix sample Beck used in Loser. The origin, of course, is from Steve Hanft’s film Kill the Moonlight, and the sample was also included on the Kill the Moonlight soundtrack.
After reading some speculation on this, I decided to listen closely and see if I could hear the sample many others claimed to clearly detect. I could hear what might sound like the word “driver,” but I wasn’t really convinced. So I took the HDtracks [24-bit 96 kHz FLAC] version of the song and created a mono inverted mix, reversed the playback when I was convinced it was backwards talking, and did some EQ work to isolate vocal frequencies. The end result can be heard below. Sounds like ordinary studio chatter, and the only words that clearly stand out to me are “Nothing Matters.” What do you hear?