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.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 11:09. It is filed under In The Studio With..., THITH Zine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

←

→