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In The Studio

Holy Ghost! Make A Record!

Our Brooklyn neighbors, Holy Ghost! have been working on their debut album. With 4 finished mixes and 8 to go, they expect to finish up in time for New Years. We can’t wait for it! In the meantime, Alex and Nick give us a peek at how it’s going.


Alex-We’ve been working on our album for roughly 2 years but, it’s hard to define because we’ve been making music together in one way or another for a long, long time. Nick and I were in a band in High School together that eventually became Automato, a short lived outfit through which we met  James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy. When Automato disbanded, Nick and I just kept working on music together and occasionally with James, Tim, and Juan Maclean. Somewhere along the line Holy Ghost was born. But…. I like to use “Hold On” in October of 2007 as a marker for beginning this album. So like 2 years. ( Defensive disclaimer:  we did 13 remixes in this time period and toured as dj’s extensively so that contributed to the delays!)


We  joke that the copy on our record is going to set a record for length and number of names. The first real sessions were in Woodstock in the summer of 2007 at a studio called Flymax (r.i.p). We had written a bunch of songs and recorded a lot of it but needed a real studio to record drums and vocals the way we wanted to. Juan came with us and he basically engineered the sessions. He worked really hard and taught us a lot. He also played an awesome guitar solo on a song called “Static On The Wire.”
The following summer we went into Metrosonic studios in Brooklyn with Tim Goldsworthy for a few days. The centerpiece of those sessions was a song called “Say My Name,” which has my favorite piano sound on the record: an upright recorded through contact mics placed on the interior of the harp. Then in September of this year we went in for our first really extended sessions with Chris Zane at Gigantic studios in Manhattan. We’re sill in there now, mixing the record. Chris basically tied together all the little sessions we had done and helped solidify the various recordings as one piece of work. We also re-tracked almost all of my vocals with him.  Working with Chris has been the most pleasant and relaxed and creative process I’ve experienced.

Oh, we also worked with Eric Broucek at his studio in Brooklyn for the mix of ” I Will Come Back” and with James Murphy on the mix to “Hold On” at Plantain, the DFA Headquarters and studio in the West Village, And of course we work at home all the time, and of course I’m forgetting a lot…
Nick-…And Matt Thornley also helped us mix “I Will Come Back” when it needed some fixing and also helped with the mix of the song we did with Michael McDonald.  All this said though, the majority of the work for the record has really been done at our home studio.  We’ve really only gone to work elsewhere when we needed to do something that we don’t have the means to do at home - like drums or a children’s choir - or when we’re looking for guidance, as has been the case with working with Chris at Gigantic.



Alex-Chris has been tremendous. Having someone there in the role of producer has allowed both of us to take the producer hat off to some extent and focus more on playing, writing, arranging. Having someone edit your vocals, adjust the mic, switch the compressor, etc, removes a lot of the technical focus we usually have and allows us to indulge ourselves a bit as “artists.” That sounds corny, but it’s true, for me at least.
Nick-Yeah, it took some getting used to for me, but it’s really nice having someone else - and someone who’s far more skilled than us - handling the engineering side of things.  Likewise, we both just really enjoy being in a nice, big studio. There was a time when I found it kind of intimidating - like, not knowing my way around, not being able to articulate what I wanted or demonstrate something I’m after.  But having spent so much time in studios over the years, now whenever we have the chance to get out of our own space we’re like kids in a candy store as far as taking advantage of all the things we don’t have at home like specific pieces of gear, or a nice big live room or whatever.



Alex-With remixes and a single like ” I Will Come Back” we approach things from the position of making a 12″ dance single that, ideally, people will dance to, but with an LP you have a larger format to work within so we started thinking about variation in tempo, arrangement, mood, length, etc. And we can also do something that’s maybe not a “single” and that’s ok. But at the same time, I think we’ve also found that we do love singles and we do love pop music and we’re not that interested in making something “weird” or “intelligent” just for the sake of doing it. So hopefully our album will have songs that go nicely into each other but can also be extracted from that context and stand on their own. 


Nick-The general process for writing each song is pretty similar from song to song as far as what each one goes through before it’s finished but, like Alex said, with the LP we’ve allowed ourselves to write songs that don’t have to work on the dancefloor.  I was talking to a friend about writing and recording dance music the other night and we were both saying that there’s something really fun and comforting about working within the constraints of making a 12″ - of course the song has to be okay, and in our case we have to excited about the individual sounds, but at the end of the day it has to “work” when people play it out.  To do that it needs to follow a basic framework of sorts - drums have to be tough, getting slower than 115 BPM or faster than 130 BPM is risky, etc. As fun as it is to work with those constraints, it’s been nice to work without them on some of the songs on the LP.
Alex-There’s a song on the album at 97bpm. It will never be played out in a dance club, but it sounds good in a jeep. That sort of thing.  

More Holy Ghost!:
holyghostnyc.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/holyghostnyc

Holy Ghost! recommend:
“The new Still Going remix of “Caught Up” by Crazy P, the Terje remix of Shit Robot’s “Simple Things” and the Cut Copy remix of the new Munk single. New Aeroplane vs. Lindstrom, Still Going’s new 12″ on DFA “Spaghetti Circus”, alot of edits by The Revenge,  all the new jams coming out on Wurst, edits by Jacques Renault, Runnaway, Linkwood 10″, new Mr. Chin record “American Standard,”  and generally alot of stuff our friends our making.”  

xox Jerry Fuchs.

2009 12 08

In The Studio
THITH ZINE FEATURES

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THITH IN THE STUDIO


We’ve been hiding & kind of quiet for the last few months choosing to spend the summer mostly locked away writing, self-producing some songs and occasionally collaborating with Jacques Renault at his home studio and getting help from The Rapture’s Vito Roccoforte. We ended up with a stack of tracks and used those self-produced recordings as the basis for working on finished mixes and additional production with Eric Broucek in his Brooklyn studio, Chris Zane and Alex Aldi at Gigantic in Manhattan and now, here in London with Richard X.

We’re halfway through two-weeks of recording in London with Richard and this means that we’re roughly halfway through making our debut record!





“noodles”


Once we finish up here we’re going to take a little break before heading back to finish up In New York. We’re aiming to have it all finished in December with new tracks to finally share in the new year!
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2009 10 15

In The Studio
THITH NEWS

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ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
IN THE STUDIO WITH PASSION PIT

How does a band, one critically acclaimed EP into their career, respond to the pressures of scrutiny and anticipation? If you’re Passion Pit, it would seem you retreat deep into the studio to work and work and work some more. Last month, while recording the debut LP, drummer
Nate Donmoyer took a deep breath to reflect for us.
Photographs by Ian Quay


I was not in Passion Pit when this record began. Michael did the first Passion Pit EP alone and then attempted to do the same with the full-length. I joined the band while he was in Bedstuy doing the first version of this album. He came back to Boston and we rehearsed for a couple days and then the Piano’s residency in New York started. Before we knew it, we had the opportunity to redo the album and I have been here in Manhattan with Michael since we started in November.
Studio recordings I have worked on in the past were done in the more frugal and common style of coming into the studio with the songs rehearsed and tracking with as few takes as possible. Usually the idea has been to record the entire band and vocals live all in one take and only sometimes we were lucky to have time to track each instrument individually. This record could not be farther from that. Having producer Chris Zane and assistant Alex Aldi working with us everyday is unreal to begin with, let alone sitting in Philip Glass’ old Tribeca studio packed full of gear I never thought I would see in person. Having Chris and Alex know how to juice every last drop of brilliance from this gear into our sound has been a godsend. I don’t understand how we got so lucky!

Not only did we track almost every 4 bars separately, we wrote most of it in the studio. As an electronic producer, that’s how I do it when I’m alone in my bedroom, but never with a band, never with an expensive studio or producer. But, I don’t think we have wasted a penny. Maybe I’ve bought a couple beers I did not need, but Mike and I share a bed here in New York City, and sometimes I need a little coaxing to snuggle up. I mean here we are in early January and we have maybe 3 songs left to put vocals on, and with only mixing and mastering to come after that, our job is pretty much done. At that rate we could put out 4 full lengths a year. I’ve been in bands that play songs for years before they make it to tape. Watching Mike and Chris work like this has not only been inspiring but made me realize how lazy I am. The things we wanted to work on while making this record were the level of production, mixing, recording, and songwriting as well as balance of quantity and quality. For me, as well as everyone else, what was important was the sound design of the synthesized voices within the band and on the recordings. It is one thing to dig through Moog patches and come up with something that sounds like a “warm vintage analog synth!” there’s a place for that but not everywhere. I think we all had a lot of fun exploring new and old hardware and software while recording this and that helped us achieve what we were hoping for sonically coming into this, which is something fresh.

Aside from the sound of Mike’s voice and the heavy layered synths, the moods are similar to the EP, but if I were the random listener , I think it would feel like I was going from the Fung Wah Bus to having a chauffeur driving me around in a Prius; it’s the same trip but a lot more efficient. From the beginning, joining this band has been the challenge I always dreamed of and dreaded. Mixing synths and guitars and live drums and samples and drum machines to make a tight android of a band has been a goal of mine since middle school. In August I stepped into Passion Pit and the parts were all there. For the first time I play live to a click and half my responsibility as a drummer is gone so I can concentrate on other elements of the songs. But that was the old EP, here in a few days, once we are comfortable with structure and parts of the final songs, I head back to Boston to rehearse the band to get ready for when Mike gets back from monitoring the mixing process and we have maybe 4 or 5 days to get ready for our first headlining tour. I can’t wait to get out of New York…

2009 01 27

In The Studio

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AU REVOIR SIMONE’S HEATHER D’ANGELO
IS NOT MAKING LASAGNA ANYMORE


Dear, THITH,
I’m writing this from within the confines of our dimly lit, incense-scented, makeshift studio at Erika’s house in Williamsburg. It’s a crappy, rainy, cold day outside, but we’re warm and happy in here. Annie is knitting a scarf, as per usual, and Erika is sitting on a pillow on the floor, typing away on her laptop. Our producer extraordinaire, Thom Monahan, is sitting at Erika’s desk, manipulating audio files in Protools. We’re listening to the tracks out of some nice studio speakers bought exclusively for this phase of the recording process: the intensely listening, pre-mixing, overdubbing part.


ANNIE KNITTING. KEYBOARDS WAITING.

We’ve been going about recording this album in a more nomadic fashion than we’re used to. First we did pre-production at our practice space and at Annie’s home studio in Greenpoint, but she has cats so I couldn’t spend that much time there without having an asthma attack. Then we did a few days of tracking at a studio called ‘Salt flats’ in Dumbo, which was, incidentally, down the hallway from our old Boggs practice space, Ah, memories. We did a bunch of tracking at Amber Studio in Manhattan and at Erika’s house, before moving to L.A to do ever-more tracking (mainly vocals) at Thom’s studio. After L.A., Annie, Erika, and I took a two-week break, giving Thom time to do plenty of re-amping, comping, and finessing-in-general. He flew back to NYC for Thanksgiving because his wife’s family is here, and so we took that opportunity to set up a studio at his mother-in-law’s house on the Upper West Side. But we didn’t want to overstay our welcome there, so we moved to Erika’s house about a week ago, and have been hanging out here in her living room ever since. She baked a pumpkin pie this morning that we’ve all been thoroughly enjoying. She also makes good coffee. That’s pretty much all we require of a studio.

We’re going to be here until December 22nd, after that we’ll take a two-week holiday break then start up again in L.A at Thom’s house. We’ll be there for a just few days before moving on to an undetermined location to do mixing. We’ve got a mastering date set for January 20th at Golden in Ventura, so that’s our deadline, but we still have four songs to record, so that’s a bit stressful. Two of those songs were written a while ago, but we never got around to tracking them, and the other two were written during our November break. Hopefully no one will have any new songs pop into their heads until February.

We’re all thrilled about how things are going though. Thom is an amazing gear-head synth-geek genius, so we feel truly lucky to have found him, although we didn’t really find him, Bjorn (the B in P.B.J) actually suggested Thom for us, so we’re indebted to him for that tip. None of us could imagine making this particular album with anyone else. We were looking for someone who had the ability to find a way of expanding our sound while continuing to honor our imposed limitations of being an all-keyboard band. We still don’t have guitars, we still don’t have a live drummer, but Thom has managed to help us make yet another entirely keyboard-driven album without it ever sounding tedious. At least, I don’t think it sounds tedious! Our keyboard sounds came from a long list of vintage synths that we either owned or borrowed from friends, our beats are all from vintage drum machines again. I don’t think that there is a track on the whole album that hasn’t been tweaked in some way through re-amping, pedals, or whatever else it is Thom is doing when we’re not looking. A magician never reveals his secrets. We also spend a lot of time listening to Suicide, which seems to have become more of an influence on this album than we ever imagined it would be, but there is something about Suicide’s powerful simplicity that resonates with the kind of aesthetic we’re going for, which is a much different aesthetic than our last album.

With ‘The Bird of Music’, we struggled with trying to reconcile our desire to hear a sense of space with our greater desire for everything to sound lush and layered, and when that confusion was coupled with our inability to effectively articulate what we wanted, the consequence was finding ourselves with an only half-achieved goal. It was our own fault though, we’re still learning as we go along obviously, and the forming of a cohesive idea about who we are, what we’re trying to say, and how we want to sound never fully jelled until we went out on the road for two years and were exposed to the world. Not that we were sheltered or something, but both of our past records were conceived and produced from within this little world that we created where any whimsical fancy of ours was explored and included. Like, we wrote a song about horse races, about calculators, teenage Mexican boys, etc. And its not like we don’t think those songs are great, but we were kind of stylistically all over the place. We’d have some emotionally evocative song like ‘Through the Backyards’ on the same record as ‘The Disco Song.’ And for me, our live shows always felt almost schizophrenic because at one point we’d be playing a song like ‘Lark,’ which has all these gothic moments, and then play an 808-laden dance song about media politics the next minute.


ERIKA ON FORTUNE COOKIE BREAK

This album is much more introspective, but I mean introspective as a group as opposed to individually. The three of us have become so close these past few years from constantly being together that we’ve become more similar people as a result. It would be impossible at this point to not write songs which all complement one another’s because we’re all coming from the same place emotionally, and since we’ve all shared the same experiences, we naturally are expressing similar things in our music. It’s also become impossible for us to hide what our songs are about from one another. All new lyrics are always met with an interrogation starting with ‘that’s about so and so!’ with knowing smiles, finger-pointing, and blushing. In the past, I felt slightly embarrassed about recording our music and publicizing it before because I wasn’t sure if I felt comfortable with opening up our private world to people who would judge us, but this is even worse! This new album is like our shared diary, so we’re very protective of it, and are being very careful with it.
I just asked Thom to describe this album in five words and he says:
‘pulses, gust-of-wind, gossamer, rustling leaves, minimal’
That was not what I expected to hear! Also not five words.
But I like that description. I think its kind of hilarious that what I would have described as ‘loud’ and/or ‘powerful’ he would describe as ‘gossamer.’ Shit. I guess we don’t really know how to rock.

Another big difference for me with making this album is that for the first time I’ve been able to put forth 100% of my effort into doing just music. During this point in the process with TBOM, I was still trying to juggle my astronomy studies with my music, which was stressful for me. Consequently, I feel that both suffered from my inability to choose one. This time, I’ve decided to dedicate all of my time to the album, and put science aside for the time being. But I still feel a deep longing for it-studying science gives me a much different feeling of excitement than getting to play music does–I guess because its much more challenging for me than writing music–although the high that I get from suddenly understanding a physics formula is actually quite similar to the high that I get from writing a song. Both produce a sense of accomplishment. But I miss my friends at Columbia, I miss being in class and going to lectures…at the same time, I also realize that reaching the goal of this album turning out how I want it to requires that I be nothing less than fully present, and fully participating. I can’t be daydreaming about life on other planets if I want the album to sound good. I know this because there are so many decisions that were made on TBOM that I don’t remember being present for, and I know that I would have been more thoughtful about those decisions if I hadn’t been so freaked out about finals. Being able to do nothing but concentrate on our album has been good for me, and good for the album, but alas, bad for research.

We’ve been watching a lot of Youtube videos at the end of each night. Thom is a big fan of Juana Molina and Imogen Heap and after watching their videos I’ve started to obsess about doing more on stage now, despite the fact that this album doesn’t call for real-time sampling or vocoders. But I’m smitten by these talented one-woman-bands and secretly fantasize about what we would sound like if we all did as much. Imagine a band of three Juana Molinas!

Besides even that, I’m just smitten by musicians who are actually good at their instruments. I’m not even trying to be funny or cynical or something, its just that there is a lot of amateurish stuff out there, and I know I’m personally guilty of contributing to that. I saw Marnie Stern recently and though I’m not a huge fan of her music, I left the show being so impressed with her undeniable talent at playing guitar. I want to be like that, better at playing my keyboard, better at programming drum machines, better at doing more on stage, better at singing and though that seems like a pretty obvious thing for a musician to want to do, for me, its not. Up until we started touring all the time, I’ve regarded being in this band as a kind of highly involved excurricular activity or as an after-work lady’s club, one that gradually took over my life until suddenly I found myself managing my own record label and writing ‘musician’ in as my profession on my landing cards. But five years later, I think the imposter syndrome is finally wearing off, which probably means that the album will tank.
I’m ok with that too though. I’ve finally made something I’m proud of that isn’t lasagna.
xxH

HEATHER D’ANGELO’s band, AU REVOIR SIMONE, followed the 2006 release of the ‘Verses Of Comfort, Assurance & Salvation ‘ E.P. with a debut full-length,The Bird Of Music’ in 2007 for which they toured extensively throughout Europe, North America and Japan. A student at Columbia University, Heather also keeps a science blog called ‘Hello, Poindexter’.
ARS
HELLOPOINDEXTER.COM

2008 12 12

In The Studio

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RAKES’ GUITARIST MATTHEW SWINNERTON
& PRODUCER CHRIS ZANE ‘LOST’ ON PLANET ROC

The second of our two part profile on East-Berlin’s Planet Roc Studios in the Funkhaus.
Here in Pt. II, Chris Zane and Matthew Swinnerton discuss recording The Rakes new album there.
Read Pt. I Here.
 

Chris-I think what makes recording at a place like Planet Roc so unique is all of the things that happen once you get past the obvious. Once you get past simply being in a unique city like Berlin, once you get past being in a place that itself feels virtually removed from the city, once you get past working in a place that’s so rundown and old and get beyond its rich and dark history, another layer of details, subconscious details, start to reveal themselves.

Matthew-One of the main reasons for opting to record in Berlin as opposed to London was that we were keen to really immerse ourselves in the process of making an album away from the distractions and comforts of home. Here, even the studio is situated in an outlying district of the city. The long tram ride takes you from the lively student area of Freidrichshain past an imposing power station to the sprawling former DDR radio complex where Planet Roc is located. Berlin is a city with an abundance of space and this is also true of the studio itself. You can wander from the live room down corridors, into dusty boiler rooms and alcoves, past doors perhaps unopened for a decade or more.

Chris-The place is mental. And it’s mental in a real way, not a way where you WANT it to be crazy, the place just is nuts. Period. We got a tour of the whole complex from a groundskeeper who was here from the beginning. He’s very old, very tall, and very creepy. speaks not a word of English.

Matthew-In a particularly adventurous mood we ventured into the outlying administrative buildings. Here the sense of a world abandoned is intense, floor upon floor, room upon room left empty, the floor strewn with wires and broken glass.

 

Chris-I guess when the wall came down the people there just literally stood up and left. There are tons of documents and stuff all over the place. I took some. I also found records/receipts/purchase orders for microphones going all the way back to 1955. Crazy.

 

Chris-The place is old, and not just old in the physical sense, it has the never-ending reminder of what once was there in every inch of the place. The most consuming thing for me though, is how just so little of the place is actually ‘operational’. Pretty much it’s just the one or two buildings that are being used and the rest are still completely defunct, destroyed, and abandoned. And as a result of this, you get this crazy situation where nature meets technology or an ancient technology, I suppose. Overgrown lawns, wandering tree branches, they all have infiltrated these old structures, and even threaten the ones in use. All in all it’s very creepy. The best pop culture metaphor I can use is the TV show ‘LOST’. Kinda mysterious sci-fi weirdness that oozes with a sense of ‘what was’ here, but is now being repurposed.

Matthew-Ten minutes spent in these modern ruins has you yearning for the warmth of the control room.

 

Chris-All of this sensory overload no doubt makes its way into the music, and the best part is that it does so without much effort. You’re just ‘in it’ so there is no need to really find inspiration at Planet Roc. I was just telling the band last night how great it was that it just came together without much thought about it, where as, if we had recorded in New York, or London, we probably would have had to have made a more conscious point of trying to get the vibes right. 

Matthew-The atmosphere is good. The sense of camaraderie high and the appearance now and then of a mysterious figure in dark glasses and trilby (the ghost of a former Stasi spy with a Ray Charles fetish?) ensure that we get suitably hyped up for each performance.

Chris-The studio itself is amazing. The spaces are huge, and the acoustics are unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been. Its not just the sheer size–or lack there of–of some of the rooms, its’ the classic German approach to doing nothing 75%. The sound of these rooms, just are correct. For example, the largest room: It boasts 35 foot ceilings, it’s very big; but it sounds so controlled. That’s because throughout the Funkhaus, where they built these large rooms, they built another on top. They literally mirrored the rooms above so there is a 35 foot ‘resonating chamber’ above the live room. 

It leads to the inevitable interesting drum sound, whether it’s the massive live room or recording kick drum, snare drum and cymbals one at a time in the dungeon, or the reality-bending, ‘dead room’. There are also all these East-German microphones. One in particular was known for being Hitler’s mic of choice for public speaking. It’s a huge tube microphone, with a small little capsule on the top. The staff has a piece of tape on it labeled “Hitler bottle”.  You literally, just aren’t going to get something like that anywhere else. These were standard issue at the Funkhaus during its heyday, and lo and behold, they still sound absolutely amazing. 

Matthew-We wanted to capture as much as possible the feeling of a band playing together live in a room. We set up in the main room huddled around the drum kit at the bottom of some extravagant stairs, once used to capture atmospherics for the radio plays recorded here. Every day we approach a new song and by the end of each day we have vocals and the main body of the performance done. It’s a new method for us but is the best way of keeping the excitement up and allowing us all to focus. The inherent edginess of a place like planet roc manifests itself in some way in each performance. 

Chris-Whether it’s the history, the scale, or even just the odd lighting combined with the horrific design aesthetic of the 1950’s, there is a constant undercurrent that tells you try more, or maybe just try less; and let it be what it is, putting faith in the studio to let it stand on its own.

Chris Zane-Is an always hard working, over worked, sometimes neurotic, often irritated, producer and engineer and one of the funniest people we’ve ever met. Recently, he’s worked on or produced The Walkmen, White Rabbits, Shy Child, Asobi Seksu and Harlem Shakes.

Matthew Swinnerton and The Rakes are well-read, well-traveled, well-dressed and have released two well-received albums of art-infused rangy post-punk for which they have toured relentlessly with the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Klaxons.
The Rakes.
Download the Rakes at Other Music Here.

2008 10 13

In The Studio
THITH ZINE FEATURES

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