April reviews from the mainstream daily paper the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.
Arcade Fire – Miroir Noir DVD (Merge)
You already know way too much about your favourite band. You’ve read their blog. You’ve heard them shoot their mouth off to any writer or radio host who will listen. You’ve seen all the amateur live video on YouTube. There is no mystique, no curiosity left.
That’s why, at a time when every moderately successful artist has a documentary DVD on the market, Arcade Fire’s Miroir Noir is so refreshing. There are no interviews here. There are very few complete songs, and most individual tracks are spliced together from footage of rehearsals, recordings and concerts. At other times, songs from the 2007 album Neon Bible appear in radically reductionist mixes, with only one or two instruments in isolation.
The film opens with the band members being put to sleep (or sedated) and lying lifeless on the floor; the next 70 minutes flows like a series of disconnected dreams and distant memories—which, no doubt, is probably how they remember the media whirlwind and the year-long world tour they started in March 2007. The through line of the film’s loose narrative is the disembodied voices of fans and bewildered innocents who called the 1-866-NEON-BIBLE number, which was set up as part of a mysterious marketing campaign that preceded the album’s release; their occasionally confessional ramblings are equally poignant and pointless. Halfway through the film, one caller decries the lack of “exciting developments” that the viral marketing promised; his voice is set to the image of guitarist Tim Kingsbury mowing the lawn.
Like the idea of a 1-800 number itself, Miroir Noir gives the viewer the illusion of intimacy and access to the band—there are plenty of candid moments, both beautiful and ridiculous—yet we don’t know any more about Arcade Fire by the end of the film than we did going in.
With handheld cameras, director Vincent Morisset and cinematographer Vincent Moon capture the energy and charisma of the band in a variety of settings, playing in cramped elevators and massive stadiums. One of the only live tracks to appear intact is fan favourite “Lights Out”—which consists almost entirely of footage of fans freaking out in the front row.
Other bands have tried this esoteric approach before—particularly Radiohead’s moribund Meeting People is Easy—but they usually don’t accomplish anything more than proving how boring life as a rock band really is. Miroir Noir, on the other hand, is mysterious, wondrous and enigmatic. (K-W Record, April 2)
Bell Orchestre – As Seen Through Windows (Arts and Crafts)
Two strings, two brass, guitar, saxophone and percussion—that’s the entire instrumentation of Bell Orchestre, though it certainly doesn’t sound like it on “Stripes,” the opening track of the Montreal ensemble’s second album, where everything is distorted beyond recognition while announcing a stately fanfare over top of pulsing tape loops.
Though the instrumentation comes into clearer focus on the rest of the album, a sense of mystique and wonder lingers. The brass section—trumpet and French horn—emulate a pachyderm parade on “Elephants,” a track where a bowed upright bass plays a dub reggae bass line, the violin swoops and dances around the melody, junkyard percussion crackles underneath Spanish handclaps, and at one point the string section and the drum kit hammer out a thrash metal rhythm. In the hands of almost anyone else, this would be a train wreck, albeit a lively and scenic one; Bell Orchestre tie it all together with taste, coherence and restraint. Not to mention beauty—their meticulous attention to detail is rewarded at every turn, especially the wintry atmospheric textures that underscore nearly every track. (K-W Record, April 23)
Beirut – March of the Zapotec/ Realpeople – Holland (Ba Da Bing!)
When Zach Condon first appeared as Beirut, trumpet and ukulele in hand, he drew influence from Balkan brass music that he’d only experienced second-hand at that point. On the first of two EPs bundled together here as a new album, he ventures from his New Mexico home to Mexico itself and hangs out with mariachi horn players—although the regional influence is hardly noticeable. This isn’t the cartoonish mariachi that often bleeds into gringo music; instead, it sounds just like Beirut (the band, of course), which speaks to Condon’s aesthetic existing outside specific geographical affectations.
That’s especially true when it comes to the second half of this album, credited to the alias Realpeople, where he abandons acoustic instrumentation entirely for electro pop ala The Postal Service. When set against an entirely digital landscape (save a lone accordion), Condon’s songwriting is instantly identifiable, even on the instrumental numbers absent of his Morrissey-esque crooning style.
In both halves of this release, Condon creates his own musical cartography that promises picturesque musical postcards for years to come. (K-W Record, April 2)
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love (EMI)
The Decemberists’ singer/songwriter, Colin Meloy, has been mocked relentlessly for the literary aspirations he invests in his lyrical narratives. Which is entirely unfair—in this era of diminished expectations, Meloy should be commended for holding up a storytelling tradition and adapting it to his modern rock/pop/folk band.
Until now, that is. The Hazards of Love is the kind of bloated excess that Meloy’s critics have always accused him of, when in fact what made all his earlier records so compelling was his ability to create vivid characters and narratives in the space of a five-minute song. Here, he pens an hour-long opus with guest vocalists playing supporting characters, a children’s choir (of course), and jarring shifts of mood and genres (including metal).
And while the ambition is admirable, as is the musicians’ craft, the music itself is not. Given such a broad mandate, much of The Hazards of Love sounds the same—because a lot of it is the same, this being an opera with recurring motifs. But rather than providing continuity or hinting at thematic links, these motifs are merely tiresome over the course of an hour. Meloy has fallen down his own rabbit hole, letting the concept trump his own creativity; there’s nary a song here that compares with anything on their 2006 album The Crane Wife, which featured a similar (if less complex) narrative arc.
If anyone, Colin Meloy is the kind of songwriter that should be able to pull this off—which makes it all the more tragic that he doesn’t. (K-W Record, April 9)
Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe (Mute)
Fever Ray - s/t (Mute)
After 30 years as a member of Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan sings, "There's a fragile tension that keeps us going." The last half of the band's career has been bumpy, both personally and musically, which is likely why many fans are ecstatic to hear that Sounds of the Universe marries the two most beloved periods of the band: the analog synth sounds of their earliest hits and the more guitar-driven textures that fuelled their commercial breakthrough in the early '90s, when they were transformed into a stadium rock band.
But if Sounds of the Universe resembles classic Depeche Mode sonically, their best songwriting days are long behind them. There's a lot of soul searching going on in the lyrics, though it doesn't get much deeper than "peace will come to me" or "my little light will shine so bright" or "we are here/ we can love/ we share something." Their therapists must have trouble staying awake, and lacklustre melodies don't make it any easier for the audience.
Much more fascinating is Depeche Mode's labelmate Fever Ray, a new project for Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of the icy Swedish electronic duo The Knife. As Fever Ray, Andersson still explores electronic textures -- many of which could have been borrowed from early Depeche Mode records -- though she also employs marimbas and other malletted percussion that sound just as eerie and alien as the synths that moan and whistle in the background. Andersson consistently toys with her vocals, pitching them up to helium levels and down to a manly baritone, adding even creepier overtones to her Nordic goth atmospheres. And, unlike Depeche Mode in 2009, she has the melodies to match her moods; these songs crawl under your skin and haunt you for days.
Fever Ray owes a lot to various '80s oddballs -- Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance and others -- but is anything but imitative. By taking cues from artists who forged such singular sounds of their own, Fever Ray creates her own vivid imaginary world with a confident, unique vision. (K-W Record, April 30)
Mike Evin – Good Watermelon (Just Friends)
I hate to judge a book by its cover, but Mike Evin seems like a really nice guy who really does want to offer you a slice of watermelon, as he does with an outstretched hand on the cover of his album, titled Good Watermelon. On the back of the album he’s pictured playing piano in someone’s backyard, decked out in a wide sun hat and flashing that grin again, while his friends chow down on—you guessed it—some good watermelon.
Inside are nine songs that sound like they were written by a talented summer camp counsellor with a knack for classic pop hooks, writing sunny slice-of-life songs like “Rockin’ Receptionist,” “Sweet Family Outings,” “Goodnight Crickets,” and—yes, of course—“Good Watermelon.”
Despite the hokiness, it’s hard to dislike Mike Evin, and not just because he seems like a really, really nice guy. He writes piano pop that owes large debts to Randy Newman, Joe Jackson and Ben Folds; he’s both a great singer and a fine keyboardist; and he’s a fan of warm-sounding, live analog recordings.
Like any good watermelon, it tastes sweet, isn’t the least bit filling, and could probably benefit from a vodka injection—though that doesn’t usually happen at summer camp. (K-W Record, April 16)
Marianne Faithfull – Easy Come Easy Go (Universal)
Marianne Faithfull sounds like death warmed over. But of course, that’s been her schtick for the last 30 years, and it's worked wonders on classic albums like 1979's Broken English, 1987's Strange Weather and 2002's Kissin' Time. On each of those, she's played up her femme fatale character and survivor instincts to full effect, and with top-notch collaborators.
This album holds similar promise, with an inspired song selection—covers include Neko Case, Morrissey, Merle Haggard, Brian Eno, Dolly Parton and the Decemberists—and a guest list that includes Rufus Wainwright, Nick Cave, Cat Power and others.
Yet rather than rising to the talent surrounding her, Faithfull sounds content to simply show up and let everyone else do the work. She seems incapable of breathing any life into these songs, sounding either distracted or on her death bed—especially when paired with a singer like Antony Hegarty, who is happy to steal the show from the distracted old bird on an eight-minute bout of ridiculousness called “Ooh Baby Baby.” Several songs fall awkwardly outside her vocal range, such as Neko Case's “Hold On Hold On” and the Decemberists' “The Crane Wife Part 3.”
What's worse is that normally reliable producer Hal Wilner, who captured so much of her fragile mystique on Strange Weather over 20 years ago, doesn't seem to know what to do with this material either, offering arrangements that sound as lost as she is.
Easy Come Easy Go is one of those awkward late career albums that threatens the artist’s integrity: no one wants to hear them warble and whimper into that good night. (K-W Record, April 9)
Green Go – Borders (Pheromone)
As one of those bands of rock kids who recently discovered the simple pleasures of disco beats, squelching synthesizers and shouting in unison, Guelph’s Green Go somehow sidestep the dozens of deadly traps that similar bands fall into on a debut album, with dexterity and dynamics that make them more than a one-note wonder. Their exuberant youth is the best and worst thing about them; the boy-girl duet “Set Me Free” falls flat, and most of the lyrics are silly at best (“let’s eat brains for breakfast!”). But the killer rhythm section redeems all, with its two-percussionist attack at the forefront of every track. No doubt they raise the roof at live shows; as a debut album, this will be a fine ambassadorial calling card. (K-W Record, April 16)
Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care (Domino)
The title of the third album by this Hamilton synth duo couldn’t be more apt. It’s borrowed from a film by pioneering Canadian animator Norman McLaren, but that’s just a red herring (other than that there’s a track here called “The Animator”). The “care” that went into this sparse, well-polished album is obvious, but it never rises above the “dull” and one wishes it would just “begone.” For all the incredulous international fuss over them, the Junior Boys have never presented a convincing case for being interesting or innovative either as electronic musicians or songwriters, despite minor redeeming moments.
Their sound is solidly rooted in early ’80s electro-pop, but there are plenty of artists then and now who mine that particular territory much more effectively, and singer Jeremy Greenspan is compelling neither as a vocalist—listening to his quiet croon urging you to “work it baby, work it” is mildly embarrassing—nor as a lyricist. “I see you better when the lights are out,” goes one chorus, which is about as profound as Gino Vanelli’s infinite wisdom about how “black cars look better in the shade.” As a wanna-be romantic, Greenspan’s come-ons are major turn-offs: “Every second takes its toll/ with every kiss you kill me more/ I’m here and undecided/ so come close and watch me until I die.”
Thanks, but no thanks. Begone, dull album! (K-W Record, April 2)
K-OS – Yes! (Universal)
The first thing you hear on the fourth album by K-OS is an agitated woman exclaiming: “Do you have any idea of chaos you caused around here? Nobody knows what you’re doing!” To which a man responds, “That’s exactly the way I like it!”
On his fourth album, Canada’s best-selling hip-hop artist isn’t exactly out on an avant-garde tangent, but there are still precious few artists who meld hip-hop, pop and rock so seamlessly—and find a commercial audience doing it—without ever sounding forced or genre tourism.
K-OS comes out swinging on the first four tracks here by saying Yes! to everything: Bollywood strings, choirs, Latin percussion, vocoder vocals and what sounds like electronic Japanese kotos all colouring his polyglot hip-hop/pop while he rhymes “ostentatious” by boasting that he’s “flippin’ scripts like Ellen Page is.”
From there, however, Yes! begins to run out of steam as K-OS starts to focus on single ideas as opposed to throwing everything together. He has never shied away from artistic risk; after all, this is the MC whose first big tour was with only a tabla player and a guitarist. He’s capable of writing big pop songs, but the catchiest songs here are interpolations: the awkwardly titled “I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman” lifts the melody from The O.C. theme, Phantom Planet’s “California (Here We Come)”; “Eye Know Something” resurrects the lone solo hit for ABBA’s Frida (“I Know Something’s Going On”), but doesn’t do much with it other than milk the chorus. He fares better teaming up with Metric and The Dears on “Uptown Girl,” or when he confronts his own contrarian and crusty reputation on “Burning Bridges.”
K-OS finds himself in a strange position: stylistically he embodies so much of what makes today’s pop music so thrilling, yet he’s an album artist in an era of downloading singles, and yet his albums are never as rewarding as individual tracks in isolation—tracks that wouldn’t cut it as radio singles, because they’re too weird. Not that a true artist should bother thinking about these matters—and K-OS clearly couldn’t care less. If his audience is willing to go along for the ride, more power to him. (K-W Record, April 23)
Metric – Fantasies (Last Gang)
Metric have always acted like bigger stars than they deserve to be—and it’s a strategy that worked, for the ambitious Toronto band got very far with very little other than the star power of lead singer Emily Haines. Now, however, Metric have made the record they’ve always promised us they would. Packed with hooks, rock riffs, and new wave textures, Fantasies retains their love for big radio songs but still leaves plenty of room to breathe. They laboured over this for a long time, and it shows: it sounds like they spent most of that time cutting off all the extra fat, and ensuring that every tiny detail is in complete focus, adding layers of subtle colour to the overall picture. The synths are both atmospheric and aggressive, competing for space with Jimmy Shaw’s muscular guitar, which avoids the monotonous modern rock trappings it mined in the past. Haines has never sung better than she does on “Collect Call,” and her melodies shine through on every track. She sings about “Stadium Love,” and there’s no doubt that Fantasies is the album that will take them to the top—and it will be well-deserved. (K-W Record, April 16)
Telekinesis – Telekinesis! (Merge)
“All of a sudden it’s summer,” sings Telekinesis bandleader Michael Benjamin Lerner, and you can practically feel the clouds part and the sunshine hit your skin when the second track here, “Coast of Carolina,” explodes with a fuzzy power pop guitar riff and bop-ba-da backing vocals. Lerner follows in the footsteps of Sloan, Matthew Sweet and dozens of others (including Vancouver’s criminally underrated Awkward Stage) by taking early ’70s guitar pop and performing the near-impossible task of making it sound fresh and exciting. Even more impressive, Lerner is a multi-instrumentalist one-man show who is as good a drummer as he is a singer, and producer Chris Walla (Death Cab for Cutie) helped him record one song a day without a single wasted note. Together, Walla and Lerner know when to heave on the layers, and when to pull back from the sonic onslaught at the perfect strategic moment to let the listener breathe. This debut is barely over a half-hour long, but— like those two prime months of summer themselves—you can pack a year’s worth of memories into a very short time. (K-W Record, April 2)
Thunderheist - s/t (Big Dada)
Thunderheist has been one of the most hotly tipped live acts out of Toronto in the last two years, and anyone who’s seen them can attest to the unstoppable personality of frontwoman Isis who, with her partner in crime Gramzilla, can rally even the most jaded, crossed-armed, chin-stroking cynic onto the dance floor.
Therefore, this eagerly anticipated debut album is inevitably a minor letdown next to the live show. After all, this is still a new act, and when heard in the light of day, most of Isis' party invocations to "light your ass on fire" don't really hold up to scrutiny. On the other hand, Gramzilla's production comes into clearer focus. His love of dirty south hip-hop, '80s electro and glitchy beats creates a speaker-shredding avalanche of decadent disco. Everything clicks on the single “Jerk It” and a handful of other tracks that are worth downloading, but for now Thunderheist still belongs in the clubs. (K-W Record, April 30)
The Tragically Hip – We Are the Same (Universal)
We Are the Same—as what? As we were 20 years and 11 albums ago? As you, our everyman Canadian audience? As a dependable Canadian institution, despite cosmetic changes to our sound over the years?
The title seems disingenuous after hearing the ubiquitous radio single “Love is the First,” which is like nothing else in The Tragically Hip’s discography: it opens with a guitar riff that could be from The Smiths, the bass line is borrowed from the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” the squelchy guitar solo takes a page from Rage Against the Machine, and singer Gord Downie is spitting out the verses with a hunger and determination he’s rarely shown in the studio.
The rest of We Are the Same is nowhere near as radical, though producer Bob Rock is clearly keeping these once-complacent CanRock icons on their toes. As he did on the underrated 2006 album World Container, he enforces an economy in their songwriting, leaving no time for pointless jamming and helping Downie focus on melody. He’s also open to the idea of the male operatic backing vocals, accordion and pipe organ that weave their way through “The Last Recluse,” or the orchestral arrangements on “The Struggle Has a Name” and “Depression Suite.” Less encouraging is when some of the ghastlier ghosts from Rock’s resume rear their heads—like the backing vocals on “Frozen in Your Tracks,” which sound like Dr. Feelgood-era Motley Crue.
Overall, however, this album refines the kind of band that The Tragically Hip have been trying to be ever since they entered middle age. Exhibit A is “Coffee Girl,” a superior rewrite of 2001’s “Lake Fever,” with a trumpet solo and Downie indulging a classic old fogey trope: mooning over a “beautiful and disaffected” barista and her choice of mix tapes. He redeems himself by reveling in the marvels of the minutia of her routine, a feat he repeats with most of his characters here. “Don’t want to look for words,” he sings, “don’t want to work that hard,” and as a result he leans toward the literal rather than the abstract for much of the album.
Granted, sometimes the mundane details are simply that. “Are you going through something? Because I am too.” “You are my heart. This is how I feel.” In both instances, those aren’t throwaway lines in the verses, but a chorus beat into submission.
Despite the red herring of the title, We Are the Same shows The Tragically Hip successfully entering a third stage of their career, one that finds them focused, engaged and acting their age. (K-W Record, April 9)
Two Fingers - s/t (Paper Bag)
As an instrumental solo artist, Two Fingers’ Amon Tobin never had trouble conveying narrative in his constantly shifting soundscapes. Here as Two Fingers, with collaborator Joe (Doubleclick) Chapman, he dives into deep bass sounds, Bollywood melodies, '60s go-go, heavy reggae and futurist funk, making this the first Amon Tobin album you might actually dance to, instead of taking a headphone trip. Which is why it's unfortunate that he felt he had to employ some painfully average MCs to rap on top; Sway and Ms. Jade merely interject with annoying vocal hooks, while only dancehall queen Ce'Cile shows any sign of personality that enhances the beats. The two instrumental tracks are dark and brooding enough to fit into one of Tobin's solo albums; if only the other tracks were given space to breathe, Two Fingers would get two thumbs up. (K-W Record, April 30)
Patrick Watson - Wooden Arms (Secret City)
After the success of his Polaris Prize-winning album Closer to Paradise, Patrick Watson stood at a crossroads: he could either veer closer to the mainstream or he could dive off the deep end with his immensely talented band to chart their own course.
Watson chose the latter -- a wise move, considering that this group excels at colouring outside of the lines (and often off the page) instead of trying to fit into a pop format, where they usually erred on the side of overwrought bombast. This may or may not be what Watson is singing about on one of the more straightforward songs here, a country-ish number called “Big Bird In a Small Cage.”
That track is one of the only songs to sing along to; much of Wooden Arms draws from Watson's classical background and his bandmates' love of unusual soundscapes and percussion. There are no attempts to rock out; instead, they embrace every strange sound they can get their hands on to craft hallucinogenic and cinematic set pieces for their own sonic universe. It works best when it fits inside a cabaret song—as on “Beijing,” “Hommage” or “Machinery of the Heavens”—but Watson and company can be almost as engaging when they embark on an entirely fantastical and incredibly imaginative detour.
That said, much of Wooden Arms is admirable more than it is enjoyable, but Patrick Watson proves that he's on a path that few other artists in this country dare to forge. (K-W Record, April 30)
Neil Young – Fork in the Road (Warner)
No, the title does not refer to a radical shift in Neil Young’s trademark sound. (It’s no Trans.) Instead, Neil is all fired up on the idea of electric cars and other sustainable modes of transportation—an unlikely subject for a rollicking rock’n’roll album, yet this sounds like the most fun that Young has had in ages.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” read a sign in Bill Clinton’s campaign office in 1992; it sounds like Neil had a similar sign in his studio. Not only is he obsessed with economic collapse and economical energy use, the music is economical as well. Uncharacteristically for Young, there’s little to no fat here, and even if the spirit of the project—and the lyrics—is spontaneous, he’s still whipped up classic guitar riffs and anthemic melodies tailor-made for open highways and dreams of possibilities. “Just singing a song won’t change the world,” he admits, so he makes sure the music matches his message.
Some of the material here is no doubt corny—and not just the songs about ethanol. But Young’s earnest energy shines through, even when he’s unashamedly embracing his role as Cranky Old Man on the title track. On Fork in the Road, Neil Young is as optimistic as he is ornery, striking a balance that’s been all too rare in the last two decades of his career. (K-W Record, April 16)
Showing posts with label Amon Tobin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amon Tobin. Show all posts
Friday, May 01, 2009
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Amon Tobin vs. Simon Angell
Yesterday Amon Tobin told us why, on his 2007 album Foley Room, he takes all the songwriting credit after using improvisations from hired musicians to construct his melodies--a question I posed in this article. Today, we talk to one of those hired musicians: Simon Angell, guitarist in Patrick Watson's band.
I've said before that I think the individual talents of everyone in Watson's band--including Watson himself--supercedes anything they do together, something I'm sure will change with time. In the meantime, both Angell and Watson are a huge part of what makes Foley Room such a fascinating listen. Here, Angell explains how it worked.
Simon Angell
November 4, 2007
Locale: cell phone from somewhere in England
I mainly want to talk about your involvement with Foley Room.
I’m proud to have been part of it. It’s a big achievement.
Did you recognize yourself on the finished product?
I did, because I have specific sounds that I’ve been working on in the last year, trying to find my own sound on the guitar. People who have hired me in the last couple of years want me to sound like me and do a specific thing. I would lay down parts and he would cut them up, but not necessarily change the sound with plug-ins and shit. A lot of the sounds were done live.
When I did the session, it was with Sarah Pagé the harpist, and he would give us little melodies and tell us to go off on that. We’d do improvisations on that melody, and then he would overdub and cut it up. But the sound was true to what we did. I was surprised. I thought he would take it apart to the point where you wouldn’t recognize what we did.
He told me that basically took tones as raw material and constructed melodies later.
He did have a short, small melody in mind, maybe four notes. It can be heard throughout, but he would also turn it into different melodies and harmonize as well, using it in different ways. I was blown away that a guy who doesn’t necessarily have any musical training was able to hear music that way. When he was showing us the melody, he was trying to sing it to us the first time, but he couldn’t really sing. After about half an hour, he said, ‘Oh, if I do it on the piano do you think it would be easier to learn.’ ‘Uh, yeah, that’s probably a good idea!’ It went a lot smoother after that.
When I first heard the record, there’s a surf-y guitar line which I’m assuming is you, and then there’s a piano melody that I assumed was Patrick [Watson]’s. And I thought, why is this album written by Amon Tobin if the most melodic thing in certain tracks comes from a distinct player?
It’s a fine line. I’d say it’s what he’s done with those lines. At this point composition is not as cut and dried as it used to be. You don’t just say, ‘You wrote the melody, and you wrote the lyrics.’ On tunes now, the drumbeat can be the driving force of the tune. Patrick has some tunes that our drummer Robbie [Kuster] essentially wrote, just from his drum part. The lines are a lot more blurred than they used to be.
It’s a very Western notion that songwriting is merely melodies and chords.
Another thing I learned recently is that you can’t copyright chord changes. I learned that from Marc Ribot; I was taking some lessons from him.
When you think about how hip-hop has changed songwriting and how producers are king there—a producer can lay down a drum track and that is, essentially, the song.
Exactly. In hip-hop and electronic music, it’s the producers. In hip-hop they’ve got it a bit more. They’ve revolutionized—though that’s a bit too strong a word—the fact that the producer makes the track and then just hires a singer to do their stuff.
I was also thinking of jazz albums where a Miles Davis album is credited entirely to Miles Davis, whereas everyone who played on that album is just as much a part of the composition as we know it.
Miles was a known tyrant for that. There are a lot of tunes that he claimed as writing—and I don’t mean the improv, but tunes that Bill Evans actually wrote. I think “All Blues” from Kind of Blue is all Bill Evans. But Miles was like, “It’s my record! My record, my song!”
You’ve done a lot of session work in general, haven’t you?
Not so much in the last year because I’ve been on the road with Pat, but in the three years before that, yes. A lot with producers. I did a lot with Rama Sutra. Last year he was the reason I was able to pay my rent!
Does songwriting enter into any of the session work you do? What creative input do session players have, and does that ever result in a songwriting credit?
The thing I’ve learned about doing session work, is that the best session players are the ones who are best able to interpret what the composer/ producer/ artist wants. Not all producers or songwriters say: okay, this is the chord chart, this is the melody, etc. A lot of times you go in with just an idea. They’ll say, ‘I want it to sound like a house burning down, and there’s music coming from an old radio from the 40s inside the house. I want something that sounds like that.’ One producer actually told me that once.
It’s all interpretation. From my experience, I’ve been lucky by either surpassing their expectation or giving them exactly what they wanted.
-end-
I've said before that I think the individual talents of everyone in Watson's band--including Watson himself--supercedes anything they do together, something I'm sure will change with time. In the meantime, both Angell and Watson are a huge part of what makes Foley Room such a fascinating listen. Here, Angell explains how it worked.
Simon Angell
November 4, 2007
Locale: cell phone from somewhere in England
I mainly want to talk about your involvement with Foley Room.
I’m proud to have been part of it. It’s a big achievement.
Did you recognize yourself on the finished product?
I did, because I have specific sounds that I’ve been working on in the last year, trying to find my own sound on the guitar. People who have hired me in the last couple of years want me to sound like me and do a specific thing. I would lay down parts and he would cut them up, but not necessarily change the sound with plug-ins and shit. A lot of the sounds were done live.
When I did the session, it was with Sarah Pagé the harpist, and he would give us little melodies and tell us to go off on that. We’d do improvisations on that melody, and then he would overdub and cut it up. But the sound was true to what we did. I was surprised. I thought he would take it apart to the point where you wouldn’t recognize what we did.
He told me that basically took tones as raw material and constructed melodies later.
He did have a short, small melody in mind, maybe four notes. It can be heard throughout, but he would also turn it into different melodies and harmonize as well, using it in different ways. I was blown away that a guy who doesn’t necessarily have any musical training was able to hear music that way. When he was showing us the melody, he was trying to sing it to us the first time, but he couldn’t really sing. After about half an hour, he said, ‘Oh, if I do it on the piano do you think it would be easier to learn.’ ‘Uh, yeah, that’s probably a good idea!’ It went a lot smoother after that.
When I first heard the record, there’s a surf-y guitar line which I’m assuming is you, and then there’s a piano melody that I assumed was Patrick [Watson]’s. And I thought, why is this album written by Amon Tobin if the most melodic thing in certain tracks comes from a distinct player?
It’s a fine line. I’d say it’s what he’s done with those lines. At this point composition is not as cut and dried as it used to be. You don’t just say, ‘You wrote the melody, and you wrote the lyrics.’ On tunes now, the drumbeat can be the driving force of the tune. Patrick has some tunes that our drummer Robbie [Kuster] essentially wrote, just from his drum part. The lines are a lot more blurred than they used to be.
It’s a very Western notion that songwriting is merely melodies and chords.
Another thing I learned recently is that you can’t copyright chord changes. I learned that from Marc Ribot; I was taking some lessons from him.
When you think about how hip-hop has changed songwriting and how producers are king there—a producer can lay down a drum track and that is, essentially, the song.
Exactly. In hip-hop and electronic music, it’s the producers. In hip-hop they’ve got it a bit more. They’ve revolutionized—though that’s a bit too strong a word—the fact that the producer makes the track and then just hires a singer to do their stuff.
I was also thinking of jazz albums where a Miles Davis album is credited entirely to Miles Davis, whereas everyone who played on that album is just as much a part of the composition as we know it.
Miles was a known tyrant for that. There are a lot of tunes that he claimed as writing—and I don’t mean the improv, but tunes that Bill Evans actually wrote. I think “All Blues” from Kind of Blue is all Bill Evans. But Miles was like, “It’s my record! My record, my song!”
You’ve done a lot of session work in general, haven’t you?
Not so much in the last year because I’ve been on the road with Pat, but in the three years before that, yes. A lot with producers. I did a lot with Rama Sutra. Last year he was the reason I was able to pay my rent!
Does songwriting enter into any of the session work you do? What creative input do session players have, and does that ever result in a songwriting credit?
The thing I’ve learned about doing session work, is that the best session players are the ones who are best able to interpret what the composer/ producer/ artist wants. Not all producers or songwriters say: okay, this is the chord chart, this is the melody, etc. A lot of times you go in with just an idea. They’ll say, ‘I want it to sound like a house burning down, and there’s music coming from an old radio from the 40s inside the house. I want something that sounds like that.’ One producer actually told me that once.
It’s all interpretation. From my experience, I’ve been lucky by either surpassing their expectation or giving them exactly what they wanted.
-end-
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Amon Tobin vs. the law
Not having been a big fan of Amon Tobin’s previous work, I was shocked at how much his 2007 album Foley Room sunk its teeth into me—I mean, real teeth, as the sounds of snarling lions suggest at one point. Elsewhere, buzzing bees and industrial machinery interact with warm, earthy instrumentation as filtered through Tobin’s various electronic textures and jazzy beats.
I wrote about Foley Room extensively earlier this year, when I chatted with Tobin for an Eye article (no longer available online, inexplicably). But there’s one thing that I don’t think that Tobin—who has built his career sampling from vinyl, and branched out to record live musicians improvising this time out—answered sufficiently last time.
The question is this: there are beautiful melodies heard here as played by some of Montreal’s finest musicians, such as Patrick Watson, Watson’s guitarist Simon Angell, members of Bell Orchestre and others, and yet all songwriting credit goes to Tobin. Why? Who wrote the melodies? Does it matter?
I pitched the idea to SOCAN, the copyright collective for Canadian songwriters, who put out a newsletter and web magazine with articles relevant to anyone interested in the mechanics of songwriting and royalties. The article also touched down on the Secret Mommy album Plays, which we’ll discuss shortly. The piece can be found here.
I put the question as directly as possible to Tobin, after an opening softball question that allowed him to contextualize his compositional process.
Amon Tobin
November 1, 2007
locale: phone, from his Montreal home
Did working with live musicians change your compositional process?
To answer properly I have to put it in a bit of context. My whole approach has to do with transforming sounds and rearranging whatever people do rhythmically or melodically, and working with existing material to make new music. I’ve spent the last ten years or so working exclusively with little fragments of vinyl, and making music with that. I see my role as not creating sounds, but re-ordering stuff.
It’s a bit like building a house. I don’t make the bricks; I put them in an order to make the house I want.
With this last record, I wanted to try and see if it would in fact have a massive impact on the way the music sounds in the end, if I paid less attention to where the sources originated and just concentrated on manipulating the sound. I had no rules whether I was only going to use vinyl, or only use field recordings. I tried to treat all the things I recorded objectively. They all had the same importance as far as composition.
It’s no disrespect to the musicians—who, by the way, were all way overqualified to do what I was asking them to do. I was asking the Kronos Quartet to make drones and play their instruments with elastic bands and swords. From my point of view, I wanted to emphasize that it was about the choices you make with your raw material and how they’re processed and re-arranged, and less about where these things come from.
People obsess about where you come from, for instance, as a way to categorize music and musicians. ‘You come from here, so you must make this kind of music.’ It’s not that I’m setting out to challenge anything. I’m more interested in exploring this. For me, it is about using musicians in a way that is clinical and objective. I’d ask them to make a tone or a drone or something simple. Because they were people like Patrick Watson and Stef Schneider who were so talented, they couldn’t help but add colour to what I was asking them to do.
I wouldn’t characterize a lot of your music as specifically melodic—it’s not the point of it, really—but there are songs like “Bloodstone” where there is a very distinct piano melody there. Is that something Patrick played as is?
See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. There’s a tendency for people to focus on this kind of thing as if that’s where the importance of the music lies. I think it’s elsewhere. Patrick and Kronos Quartet have all the credit for that piece of music. Just as in everything I’ve ever done, I don’t take credit for any of the sounds I’ve used, only for what I’ve done with them. As far as the piano part, Patrick recorded a whole bunch of different stuff on piano which I then took and sliced and mixed with other bits of piano, too. Parts come from Patrick, a few notes from vinyl.
At what point does it shift from being a recording collaboration with him to a songwriting credit?
It’s a complicated area.
Because this album says “written and produced by Amon Tobin.”
For me, writing and production are about the choices that you make and what you do with the sounds you’re presented with. Going back to the brick analogy, it’s unfair to qualify what Patrick or the other musicians did as mere bricks. But when you’re breaking this stuff down to single notes, or even a whole passage—if you take something and recontextualize it to the point where it reaches a different musical significance. I don’t know what you’d call that credit.
If you took something by Beethoven and put a techno beat behind it—for some peculiar magical reason, the marriage of those two things did something that neither of those two things did, but which also couldn’t exist without those two elements. There is a credit to making that decision that those two things together make something else. But you always have to acknowledge that it wouldn’t have existed without the original sources.
The way I see it, honestly, in terms of a moral question, is that we’re all working with narrow parameters of music. No one is inventing any new chords or any new notes. We’re all working with this scale and re-arranging these notes and chords. The raw material is pretty much the same. All you ever do as a musician—whether you’re playing it yourself or sampling it—is reinterpreting or re-ordering these notes and chords and rhythms. That is what I see as the role of the artist, or the musician, or the composer or whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t say that I own C major or any other chord. I can’t take credit for those things, just for what I do with them.
Because your previous albums were comprised entirely of vinyl samples, did you ever deal with licenses? Or were all your samples unrecognizable to the point where nobody would bother with licenses?
You can draw a division between something like Puff Daddy’s famous rendition of “Every Breath You Take,” where the song is being carried by the sample and isn’t really being re-interpreted. It’s merely being released again with another layer on top.
Okay, I can explain this better… The distinction can be drawn by your objectives as a songwriter. If your objective when you’re writing a song is to end up with something that sounds like something you’ve heard before—whether you’re sampling or playing the guitar—if you’re trying to emulate something that exists already, then you’re plagiarizing and I don’t think there’s much merit in that.
I see sampling—when it’s done properly—as being the opposite of that. You’re starting with things that you gravitate towards, and you’re trying to transform those things into something completely different. You’re going in the other direction. I might start with something very recognizable, like, say, a Count Basie bass line. If I want to take that and turn it into something entirely new and different, that’s the opposite of me playing a melody on my piano and trying to steal a little bit of that magic: what I really want to be doing is playing that Count Basie line, but I can’t, so I’ll change a note or two. My objective is completely different there.
When researching this, I also came across the famous case of the Beastie Boys vs. James Newton. Do you know about that?
I don’t think so.
James Newton is a jazz flautist who was sampled on “Pass the Mic.” It was a large case, but ultimately the Beasties won because a) they legally obtained the mechanical license from Newton’s record company, and b) they took three notes from a non-scored jazz piece, and used a six-second loop of it throughout “Pass the Mic.” The court ruled that it’s unrecognizable from the original composition, and it’s not enough of a sample to warrant compositional credit—as opposed to whatever that De La Soul case was based on 10 or 15 years before that.
We’re on shaky ground there, because then it becomes a subjective argument: is it six notes? Seven notes? This is the problem with arguments about sampling, is that people talk about it in these terms. It kind of has to be that way, but it’s not making it any easier for anyone. How many bars is okay before you’re ripping someone off? How close is too close? It’s very subjective.
I asked you earlier and you didn’t answer directly: have you ever had to license things directly because you’ve used too much of one thing?
This is an area I won’t even go into. Not going there. But basically, from a musician’s point of view, I’m not concerned with the legal aspects of making music. That’s for lawyers and publishers. I’m concerned strictly with music. For me, all that really matters is whether or not I feel I’m doing something that I feel is worthwhile and has integrity.
That’s why I come back to what the musicians’ objective is. Is your objective to cheekily steal someone else’s music? Or is your objective to take that music and make it something of your own? Even then, the language I’m using isn’t accurate enough. The notes and the chords you’re playing belong to everyone. We have this keyboard with these notes and we all work with them. No one can claim ownership of this or that. The only thing you can claim ownership of is the physical recording, and that’s when you get into publishing and mechanicals and all that.
Another parallel I thought of was the session players at Motown or in Nashville. Someone comes in and has written a song with a melody and chords, and a guitar player there might have a lick that opens the song that ends up being the most recognizable part of the song. Is he a co-writer then?
It’s the decision that was made that should be credited. Whoever decided to put that lick at the beginning of the bar or wherever that makes it recognizable—the producer, I guess. He can’t take credit for that lick, because he paid the musician for it. The musician was free to make that decision himself, had he wanted to. He could have made his own track with that lick, but he chose to do something else with it.
These cases tend to pop up years later. Last year the organ player from Procul Harum decided that he had written “Whiter Shade of Pale.”
There’s a lot of money to be made from these kind of arguments. That’s why it’s almost a separate issue. What you can prove legally depends on the definitions in the law, and they’re too crude to be applied to the intricacies of music. A few basic rules have to be applied to a wide spectrum of different shades of gray. It’s the way it is because it can’t be any other way. But you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it’s not quite accurate enough. One rule shouldn’t apply to something else that isn’t similar enough. The law in general has to be broad. When you’re dealing with something as complex as this, it’s hard to take a moral standpoint based on definitions in the law.
What did you tell your musicians coming in to the session? I’m assuming there was a very clear understanding from the beginning as to what was going on.
Oh, yeah. We all had contracts. I know these musicians personally, and they’re all very familiar with what I do. I don’t feel like I need to rip anyone off, personally. I’m not in that position. My input is in arranging, transforming and decision-making in terms of what goes where. All I’m doing is collecting source material and trying to build these musical structures out of it. I don’t really take any more credit than that for what I do.
From a legal perspective, things could be argued many different ways, especially when I sample from records. In my past, I’ve taken longer bars than just the occasional note here and there. There are times when I’ve made them completely unrecognizable. But, if I didn’t have that one piece of source material, the song may never have materialized. I don’t know. I’m repeating myself now.
When your album was done, how much of themselves did the original musicians hear on the record?
A lot of them couldn’t hear them at all. I felt a bit bad about that in some ways. They’re so overqualified. I had a whole brass section come in and do stuff, and I doubt any of them can identify where they are on the record. Others did stuff that is clearly identifiable, like Kronos, Patrick or Stefan. I was nervous playing things for some of these musicians. I didn’t want to undermine their talent or the importance of what they do. But from my point of view, it was a very clinical process. Stef is an incredible drummer who did these intricate and great drum patterns, which many times were re-ordered to such an extent that I’m not sure he would approve of what I did with his drums. You’d have to ask them.
Ask them I did. Tomorrow, a brief interview with Patrick Watson's guitarist Simon Angell, who also played on Foley Room.
I wrote about Foley Room extensively earlier this year, when I chatted with Tobin for an Eye article (no longer available online, inexplicably). But there’s one thing that I don’t think that Tobin—who has built his career sampling from vinyl, and branched out to record live musicians improvising this time out—answered sufficiently last time.
The question is this: there are beautiful melodies heard here as played by some of Montreal’s finest musicians, such as Patrick Watson, Watson’s guitarist Simon Angell, members of Bell Orchestre and others, and yet all songwriting credit goes to Tobin. Why? Who wrote the melodies? Does it matter?
I pitched the idea to SOCAN, the copyright collective for Canadian songwriters, who put out a newsletter and web magazine with articles relevant to anyone interested in the mechanics of songwriting and royalties. The article also touched down on the Secret Mommy album Plays, which we’ll discuss shortly. The piece can be found here.
I put the question as directly as possible to Tobin, after an opening softball question that allowed him to contextualize his compositional process.
Amon Tobin
November 1, 2007
locale: phone, from his Montreal home
Did working with live musicians change your compositional process?
To answer properly I have to put it in a bit of context. My whole approach has to do with transforming sounds and rearranging whatever people do rhythmically or melodically, and working with existing material to make new music. I’ve spent the last ten years or so working exclusively with little fragments of vinyl, and making music with that. I see my role as not creating sounds, but re-ordering stuff.
It’s a bit like building a house. I don’t make the bricks; I put them in an order to make the house I want.
With this last record, I wanted to try and see if it would in fact have a massive impact on the way the music sounds in the end, if I paid less attention to where the sources originated and just concentrated on manipulating the sound. I had no rules whether I was only going to use vinyl, or only use field recordings. I tried to treat all the things I recorded objectively. They all had the same importance as far as composition.
It’s no disrespect to the musicians—who, by the way, were all way overqualified to do what I was asking them to do. I was asking the Kronos Quartet to make drones and play their instruments with elastic bands and swords. From my point of view, I wanted to emphasize that it was about the choices you make with your raw material and how they’re processed and re-arranged, and less about where these things come from.
People obsess about where you come from, for instance, as a way to categorize music and musicians. ‘You come from here, so you must make this kind of music.’ It’s not that I’m setting out to challenge anything. I’m more interested in exploring this. For me, it is about using musicians in a way that is clinical and objective. I’d ask them to make a tone or a drone or something simple. Because they were people like Patrick Watson and Stef Schneider who were so talented, they couldn’t help but add colour to what I was asking them to do.
I wouldn’t characterize a lot of your music as specifically melodic—it’s not the point of it, really—but there are songs like “Bloodstone” where there is a very distinct piano melody there. Is that something Patrick played as is?
See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. There’s a tendency for people to focus on this kind of thing as if that’s where the importance of the music lies. I think it’s elsewhere. Patrick and Kronos Quartet have all the credit for that piece of music. Just as in everything I’ve ever done, I don’t take credit for any of the sounds I’ve used, only for what I’ve done with them. As far as the piano part, Patrick recorded a whole bunch of different stuff on piano which I then took and sliced and mixed with other bits of piano, too. Parts come from Patrick, a few notes from vinyl.
At what point does it shift from being a recording collaboration with him to a songwriting credit?
It’s a complicated area.
Because this album says “written and produced by Amon Tobin.”
For me, writing and production are about the choices that you make and what you do with the sounds you’re presented with. Going back to the brick analogy, it’s unfair to qualify what Patrick or the other musicians did as mere bricks. But when you’re breaking this stuff down to single notes, or even a whole passage—if you take something and recontextualize it to the point where it reaches a different musical significance. I don’t know what you’d call that credit.
If you took something by Beethoven and put a techno beat behind it—for some peculiar magical reason, the marriage of those two things did something that neither of those two things did, but which also couldn’t exist without those two elements. There is a credit to making that decision that those two things together make something else. But you always have to acknowledge that it wouldn’t have existed without the original sources.
The way I see it, honestly, in terms of a moral question, is that we’re all working with narrow parameters of music. No one is inventing any new chords or any new notes. We’re all working with this scale and re-arranging these notes and chords. The raw material is pretty much the same. All you ever do as a musician—whether you’re playing it yourself or sampling it—is reinterpreting or re-ordering these notes and chords and rhythms. That is what I see as the role of the artist, or the musician, or the composer or whatever you want to call it. I couldn’t say that I own C major or any other chord. I can’t take credit for those things, just for what I do with them.
Because your previous albums were comprised entirely of vinyl samples, did you ever deal with licenses? Or were all your samples unrecognizable to the point where nobody would bother with licenses?
You can draw a division between something like Puff Daddy’s famous rendition of “Every Breath You Take,” where the song is being carried by the sample and isn’t really being re-interpreted. It’s merely being released again with another layer on top.
Okay, I can explain this better… The distinction can be drawn by your objectives as a songwriter. If your objective when you’re writing a song is to end up with something that sounds like something you’ve heard before—whether you’re sampling or playing the guitar—if you’re trying to emulate something that exists already, then you’re plagiarizing and I don’t think there’s much merit in that.
I see sampling—when it’s done properly—as being the opposite of that. You’re starting with things that you gravitate towards, and you’re trying to transform those things into something completely different. You’re going in the other direction. I might start with something very recognizable, like, say, a Count Basie bass line. If I want to take that and turn it into something entirely new and different, that’s the opposite of me playing a melody on my piano and trying to steal a little bit of that magic: what I really want to be doing is playing that Count Basie line, but I can’t, so I’ll change a note or two. My objective is completely different there.
When researching this, I also came across the famous case of the Beastie Boys vs. James Newton. Do you know about that?
I don’t think so.
James Newton is a jazz flautist who was sampled on “Pass the Mic.” It was a large case, but ultimately the Beasties won because a) they legally obtained the mechanical license from Newton’s record company, and b) they took three notes from a non-scored jazz piece, and used a six-second loop of it throughout “Pass the Mic.” The court ruled that it’s unrecognizable from the original composition, and it’s not enough of a sample to warrant compositional credit—as opposed to whatever that De La Soul case was based on 10 or 15 years before that.
We’re on shaky ground there, because then it becomes a subjective argument: is it six notes? Seven notes? This is the problem with arguments about sampling, is that people talk about it in these terms. It kind of has to be that way, but it’s not making it any easier for anyone. How many bars is okay before you’re ripping someone off? How close is too close? It’s very subjective.
I asked you earlier and you didn’t answer directly: have you ever had to license things directly because you’ve used too much of one thing?
This is an area I won’t even go into. Not going there. But basically, from a musician’s point of view, I’m not concerned with the legal aspects of making music. That’s for lawyers and publishers. I’m concerned strictly with music. For me, all that really matters is whether or not I feel I’m doing something that I feel is worthwhile and has integrity.
That’s why I come back to what the musicians’ objective is. Is your objective to cheekily steal someone else’s music? Or is your objective to take that music and make it something of your own? Even then, the language I’m using isn’t accurate enough. The notes and the chords you’re playing belong to everyone. We have this keyboard with these notes and we all work with them. No one can claim ownership of this or that. The only thing you can claim ownership of is the physical recording, and that’s when you get into publishing and mechanicals and all that.
Another parallel I thought of was the session players at Motown or in Nashville. Someone comes in and has written a song with a melody and chords, and a guitar player there might have a lick that opens the song that ends up being the most recognizable part of the song. Is he a co-writer then?
It’s the decision that was made that should be credited. Whoever decided to put that lick at the beginning of the bar or wherever that makes it recognizable—the producer, I guess. He can’t take credit for that lick, because he paid the musician for it. The musician was free to make that decision himself, had he wanted to. He could have made his own track with that lick, but he chose to do something else with it.
These cases tend to pop up years later. Last year the organ player from Procul Harum decided that he had written “Whiter Shade of Pale.”
There’s a lot of money to be made from these kind of arguments. That’s why it’s almost a separate issue. What you can prove legally depends on the definitions in the law, and they’re too crude to be applied to the intricacies of music. A few basic rules have to be applied to a wide spectrum of different shades of gray. It’s the way it is because it can’t be any other way. But you shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it’s not quite accurate enough. One rule shouldn’t apply to something else that isn’t similar enough. The law in general has to be broad. When you’re dealing with something as complex as this, it’s hard to take a moral standpoint based on definitions in the law.
What did you tell your musicians coming in to the session? I’m assuming there was a very clear understanding from the beginning as to what was going on.
Oh, yeah. We all had contracts. I know these musicians personally, and they’re all very familiar with what I do. I don’t feel like I need to rip anyone off, personally. I’m not in that position. My input is in arranging, transforming and decision-making in terms of what goes where. All I’m doing is collecting source material and trying to build these musical structures out of it. I don’t really take any more credit than that for what I do.
From a legal perspective, things could be argued many different ways, especially when I sample from records. In my past, I’ve taken longer bars than just the occasional note here and there. There are times when I’ve made them completely unrecognizable. But, if I didn’t have that one piece of source material, the song may never have materialized. I don’t know. I’m repeating myself now.
When your album was done, how much of themselves did the original musicians hear on the record?
A lot of them couldn’t hear them at all. I felt a bit bad about that in some ways. They’re so overqualified. I had a whole brass section come in and do stuff, and I doubt any of them can identify where they are on the record. Others did stuff that is clearly identifiable, like Kronos, Patrick or Stefan. I was nervous playing things for some of these musicians. I didn’t want to undermine their talent or the importance of what they do. But from my point of view, it was a very clinical process. Stef is an incredible drummer who did these intricate and great drum patterns, which many times were re-ordered to such an extent that I’m not sure he would approve of what I did with his drums. You’d have to ask them.
Ask them I did. Tomorrow, a brief interview with Patrick Watson's guitarist Simon Angell, who also played on Foley Room.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Amon Tobin
Amon Tobin's new album Foley Room is named after the recording studios that film companies use to record sound effects. Tobin has always been a sound sculptor of the finest order, but most of this album eschews his vinyl-based sampling approach and is instead composed from sounds Tobin gathered on field expeditions (lions, tigers, and wasps, oh my!) as well as asking his Montreal neighbours to attack their instruments with various metallic objects (swords, chains).
That's the hook to get people talking, anyway. But when I sat down and listened to Foley Room before reading the liner notes, I immediately fell in love with not only Tobin's world of sound, but his compositional sense and ability to create visual narratives out of sparse melodies and harsh textures. To these ears, it's head and shoulders above anything else he's ever done: I liked previous albums fine, but nothing hit me like a brick as this one does.
Plus, he uses my favourite Montreal drummer: Stef Schneider of Bell Orchestre, a wonderfully charming man who is dangerously talented and should be far more visible than he is. Hire this man now! (update: thanks to this great article by Sarah Liss at Now I found out that Schneider is playing with equally beautiful people Pietro Amato (Torngat) and Jessie Stein (SS Cardiacs) as The Luyas this Sunday at Wavelength.)
For my original review of this CD (written for a lay audience), go here. For my article in this week's Eye Weekly, drawn from today's transcript, go here.
Mostly I was fascinated by Tobin's shift in direction here because I've never fully understood why the DJ Shadows of the world spend what--to me--seems like hours scouring for records and then isolating the sounds they want, when they could just hire someone for a few hours, get them to play exactly what they want, and then dissect that all they like. The effort put into obscuring the original sound source (something I wish Shadow had done a bit more, after I finally heard the David Axelrod albums he plundered from) seems more labour intensive then just going out and getting the real thing.
Either way, I'm glad Tobin did, and I'm convinced it has something to do with why Foley Room towers over his other albums. Even though he disagrees.
Finally, comparisons to Matmos are obvious, but there is always something with Matmos that feels like work: like I have to know what narrative they're trying to create before I hear it; like I have to know what components went into it to appreciate it; like it's all an academic exercise. That's less true of last year's The Rose Has Teeth..., but I always feel like I should like them because: a) they're really smart and funny guys; b) they've been right-hand men to Bjork and c) did I mention they're really smart and funny guys?
With Tobin, even though we have mutual friends, I don't feel any obligation to like his music for any reason other than that Foley Room is totally enrapturing.
That said, having seen a DJ set of his before, I'm not convinced that tomorrow's show at the Opera House will be the bee's knees--7.1 surround sound notwithstanding (explained at the end of the interview)--but I'm still curious to see what happens.
Amon Tobin
April 10, 2007
Locale: phone interview, having just checked into his London hotel
As someone who previously only used elements sampled from vinyl records—why have you waited this long to bring in other elements?
I think there’s still a lot to be explored with vinyl samples. It wasn’t a compromise to use samples from vinyl. It wasn’t like I couldn’t get a hold of microphones.
It was really because when you sample something that was in a different musical context before, and you adapt that and change it into a new piece of music, there is an energy—I believe, anyway—that you keep from where the sound came from. When it’s put unnaturally into an arrangement with lots of other things pulling in different directions, there’s a dynamic that happens there.
It’s a lot to do with the fact that you’re taking someone’s finest hour, on say a set of drums, and you’re taking a few seconds of that momentum and then extending it. The way you program the rhythm to extend it, the energy of that tiny little second is stretched out as far as you like.
But how do you compare that with using the people you work with on this record, bringing people in for a day or a couple of days?
I go from one extreme to another. It’s the same with digital or analog. I always wondered which way I should go, and it turns out that a bit of both is the best for me and my experience.
I was quite militant about only using vinyl and only using samples. But it’s important not to get too trapped in your own ideas of what you should be doing. To be honest, it’s not so much about source material, because I’m pretty sure you could find anything I recorded on vinyl somewhere. People have recorded lions and tigers before, trains and robots and all that.
The bonus for me personally was that I was able to learn a lot more about the music making process and about recording from that startpoint. It was much more to do with a personal education, really, on making and recording music.
Do you feel like you have more control when it’s you pointing the microphone at the animals or the musicians? As opposed to trying to find a piece of vinyl that suits the thing you have in mind, you can just go out and do it. Does this approach have more immediacy?
To some extent. You win and you lose. There are things that you find by chance on vinyl that you never imagined, and vice versa when you go out with mics. A lot of emphasis is put on the origins of sound in sample-based music, and I really think it’s important, but it’s even more important what you do with these sounds: how they’re put together, manipulated and arranged. If you think about it, lots of people have said that I have a particular sound, which is odd when you consider that all my material comes from other places.
Not recognizably, though.
No, because I think my job, my creative output, is how it’s all put together. I think the sounds could come from vinyl, from musicians, from field recordings, but the reason I did it this way was for selfish reasons. I just wanted to learn about it. It’s not because I think it’s a better or more effective technique. I still go back to records for inspiration and sample material.
Does vinyl play any role on this album?
Definitely. There are vinyl samples in there too.
Considering everything you just said, for me as a listener—as someone for whom this process is very alien—there’s something very tactile to this album compared to your other works. There is something that sounds more hands-on. I purposely didn’t read the liner notes or watch the DVD before I heard the record; I just wanted to absorb it. And for whatever intangible reason, it really struck me right away.
That’s great. There are a few things that have played into that, as well as the sound sources. I think I’ve learned a lot more about production in the last couple of years. I know a lot more about engineering. I still have a lot more to learn, but I have had a certain amount of progress. I was able as well to plan ahead a bit more, as far as getting different elements and textures from different places with a view of putting them together. Rather than wrestling with extracting the things you don’t want from a vinyl sample, which is what I’d normally be doing.
Also, you can’t take away the fact that the musicians who were involved were very proficient and couldn’t help but add their musicality and their talent to the process. The record benefits a lot from that, and you have to give credit to people like Patrick Watson and Kronos Quartet and Sarah Page and Norsola from Godspeed and all these people. Even though I was trying very hard to get them to work objectively and do very simple things, they were all so overqualified for the role I was giving them, that they couldn’t help but put something extra in there. That probably comes across in the record.
From checking the liner notes, however, you take all the compositional credit. Did all the melodic ideas come from you, were you directing them the entire time?
Mainly what I was trying to get them to do was unusual things with their instruments, in ways they weren’t used to using them. So we got the Kronos Quartet to all play the same violin at once, all four of them. We got them to do improvisation, which they never do. They’re all classically trained, and improvisation isn’t something they’re into. Norsola was playing her cello with a sword at one point.
The idea was to get source material that was pretty basic. I got drones mostly from the Kronos Quartet. Patrick Watson gave me little piano melodies that I then cut up and re-arranged, and even mixed them with some vinyl piano to make different melodies from. It was all treating everything in the same way: a rock falling, a musician, a vinyl sample. All these were treated as an objective source, and then applying the arrangements and the creation of the music afterwards.
It’s also the reason I worked so much in a foley room with Vid Cousins, who was really a technical hand in the recording of this project. Because I don’t know anything about microphones! Vid was really the man who pointed me in the direction of these particular mics, for example. The idea was to give myself as much flexibility as possible after the recordings were made.
Everything was recorded in a very dead space, and I could then either place that sound in a cathedral or a small chamber if I wanted to. It left a lot of room. The same with the musicians. I tried to get them to do things that I could then manipulate and form melodies and make songs from.
Having said that, I did at times ask them to play specific melodies. Sarah Page, who played the harp, I asked her to play a melody that appeared on a record. That happened every now and again, but I felt that was a compromise on my part. I really wanted to think about the tunes after I had all the sounds.
How long was the time divided: how long recording versus treating everything later?
We spent about four months on the road recording everything we could. About a month or so just archiving the sounds. We did it all on tape, so that gave another element. There’s creativity with tape: you can manipulate it as it’s going into the computer, so there’s a bit of that going on as well. Then I put everything into different sections and could work with it. Then it was processing, and then it was the arrangements. I think I started that in January and it went to October.
Now, was that more intense than previous records?
Yeah, because it was all done in different stages. It wasn’t harder, but it was more time consuming. And it was really good fun, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun making an album before.
It sounds like an inherently more social process than anything you’ve done before.
It really was. I made new friends. I got out of the house (laughs) and had some road trips.
Other than Kronos in San Francisco, how much of it was made outside of Montreal?
Not much. I used some drums from a session in Seattle with Michael Shrieve [sp?] and Kevin Sawka. We were trying to get to Texas to record the bats under the bridge in Austin. Also Terry Bozzio lives down there as well, and I was hoping to record some of his drums, because he’s obviously pretty wicked. But we did what was practical in the time frame we had. A lot of it was done in Montreal, in my flat.
Did you turn it into a dead space?
No, that was Ubisoft, actually [the Montreal gaming company that commissioned him to do the soundtrack for Splinter Cell]. They let me go in there after hours into their foley room to do the really clinical recording. The harp and some of the guitars and Patrick [Watson]’s stuff were recorded in my flat. There were a few things at McGill University as well.
The wasps?
That’s right, much to the dismay of John, who was having to cope with us coming in with various insects into his clean laboratory.
What did you learn from working with [drummer] Stef Schneider [of Bell Orchestre]?
He was perfect for this, because he’s like a foley drummer. He was playing drums with all kinds of different paraphernalia, and contributed an incredible amount to the record. He turned up with vats of water and various percussion we could dip into the water. He was throwing lentils and chick peas over skins of drums and playing with egg whisks, and having a blast, really.
Did most of that come from him?
Definitely. A whole ton of toys. He just rocked out. There were a whole bunch of things that we just tried, and then made some choices with the material that was there.
What was the most ridiculous thing you wanted to try?
The wasps were pretty silly. There was no need for that, really! We did some things that sounded like they would be great, but turned out to be pretty bad. We didn’t get much from that radar. It seemed cool, but I didn’t get the sounds I thought I would. That happens all the time, which is part of the process: trial and error. I have meters and meters of tape that weren’t used. Which I’m sure I could still go through and find new things.
How did you coax some of the animal sounds, or were you waiting around a lot?
There was an awful lot of waiting around. Animals aren’t always the most co-operative things. They have their own agenda. You turn up and hope they do something. There was a certain amount of coaxing, but we either got lucky or we didn’t.
Who’s playing the Hammond?
Actually, I played some of that. Oh shit, I wasn’t actually going to admit that. You caught me—I’m tired! But there are bits of Hammond from records as well. I wanted to make sure that when I did the liner notes I left things as ambiguous as possible. I didn’t want people to get all trainspotty about it. A lot of the musicians are actually confused about which parts they played, because the idea was to look at all these things as objective sources.
Does anyone come to you and say, “Where the hell am I? I thought I played on your record!”
(laughs) I was a bit worried about that, actually. I didn’t use everything I recorded, obviously, and I’m sure there are people credited that wouldn’t recognize their sounds at all. Partially because a lot of it was manipulated beyond recognition anyway, or mixed with other sounds. A lot of the sounds recorded were done with a view to mixing them with another sound to make something new. Particularly for brass stuff and some of the engines and robots and stuff. The recordings were made with a view to changing them in the first place.
I do love the wasp/guitar/motorbike combination. Did you learn more about instruments themselves, or trying your own hand at keyboards, percussion or strings?
Not really. I had such a wealth of talent around, I didn’t feel the need to jump in at any stage. I have my limits. I also appreciate the fact that people have a different outlook to give, and it’s best to give people room to breathe. I tried not to direct people too much. Maybe I’d have one or two ideas I really wanted to get across, but I spent a lot of time saying, ‘Here are some chains. Mess around with them on your instrument and see what happens.’
In my research, I found one quote of yours where you said that using session musicians would be settling for second best, compared to what you could plunder from existing vinyl. Has that impression changed?
Well, not really. I really think that if I’d gone in with a song, and said to people, ‘Let’s play this song. You do that beat, you do that bass line, and off we go.’ I don’t know if that would be as effective as trying to find these things on little slivers of vinyl. For me personally—please understand that I’m only talking about my own way of working, this doesn’t apply to everyone at all—I work most effectively like that.
The approach here with musicians was just to get basic source material. It was very different from getting a session player in to play a bass line. It was more like, ‘Go crazy on the drums, play whatever rhythm you want, because all I want is the sound and the tone of the drums and the different textures that I can then cut up and re-arrange later.’ Stef Schneider is an amazing drummer, but god knows what he thought when he heard the album, because the patterns are completely different. It’s all been cut into little pieces and re-ordered.
Compositionally, I find it different from a lot of your other stuff. Did Splinter Cell change the way you thought about composition, or did these sources effect the way you write? Or do you even notice a difference?
On some songs there were some familiar structures for me, where things start in one direction and then take a left turn and then resolve in the end. I like the big dramatic crescendos though, because I love a bit of drama! ‘Always’ has a verse/chorus thing and a bit of a pop sensibility to it. I always admire people who can pull that off. Every now and again I have a stab at it.
It’s interesting to me how that track is near the end of the album. It’s like going through this journey and then having this sweet at the end.
It was a bit of a fuck-you putting pressure on me for a single. This record wasn’t about that. As much as I enjoy three-and-a-half minute songs, I didn’t want that to be the second song on the album and then off we go into an epic number. I like doing it, but like you say, it’s a treat in the middle of some more obscure arrangements.
One of the other things I like about this album is its lack of concept, treating sound as an end in itself, leaving the narratives open for the listener. As much as I enjoy Matmos, for example, at times that does get trainspotty for me, or harder to appreciate without knowing what narrative they’re putting on it.
I was aware of all this when I was making the record, and comparisons would be drawn with other people using field recordings. It wasn’t too much of a hang-up. Basically, I want the music to come first, the satisfaction I get from making music. Whatever idea I have to begin with, I don’t want it to restrict where the song could go or how good it could be. I don’t want to be saying, ‘Well, I’d like to do that, but it doesn’t fit into my concept.’ It’s not going to happen. I want the music to be king, and everything else just facilitates that.
What do you think this project opens up for you? What comes next?
Who knows? I’m excited to try something new for myself. I have learned an awful lot. I hope I can apply these things I’ve learned to the next project I make and keep trying to improve and keep myself interested. I feel like my whole output over the years has been a learning curve. I focused on one area for a long time because there was a lot to explore. Maybe in time I’ll look at different areas.
What does a 7.1 surround sound DJ set entail?
It’s just a regular DJ set with better sound than normal. A problem I’ve often encountered is that you have this big stack at the front blowing everyone away, and at the back it’s all muffled and no one can hear it properly. Only in the middle do a few people get a decent sound. Considering that when I play there’s not much of a stage show, not much to look at, we’ve concentrated on making the event about the sound, trying to make it a different musical environment for people to listen.
But you haven’t mixed any of your own material in 7.1?
No, not at all. We’re using a system being developed by Dolby which is pretty effective. It takes things that are in stereo, or the higher frequencies and spreads them around the room. You can put any stereo signal through it. We’re using that in conjunction with a few other things that my soundman Vid has developed himself. It’s a pretty interesting effect. It’s a lot of bass, which is important, and a lot of detail that surrounds the room. It envelopes you a bit more in a three dimensional experience.
Had you seen other people do this, or did you just want to try it?
I tried it on the Splinter Cell tour in 5.1, and we had a few phasing issues while trying it out. A lot of those tracks were mixed in 5.1. We tried it, and it turns out that it’s better in 7.1, because the speakers aren’t pointing directly at each other. You have far fewer phase cancellation issues and it works a lot better.
-end-
That's the hook to get people talking, anyway. But when I sat down and listened to Foley Room before reading the liner notes, I immediately fell in love with not only Tobin's world of sound, but his compositional sense and ability to create visual narratives out of sparse melodies and harsh textures. To these ears, it's head and shoulders above anything else he's ever done: I liked previous albums fine, but nothing hit me like a brick as this one does.
Plus, he uses my favourite Montreal drummer: Stef Schneider of Bell Orchestre, a wonderfully charming man who is dangerously talented and should be far more visible than he is. Hire this man now! (update: thanks to this great article by Sarah Liss at Now I found out that Schneider is playing with equally beautiful people Pietro Amato (Torngat) and Jessie Stein (SS Cardiacs) as The Luyas this Sunday at Wavelength.)
For my original review of this CD (written for a lay audience), go here. For my article in this week's Eye Weekly, drawn from today's transcript, go here.
Mostly I was fascinated by Tobin's shift in direction here because I've never fully understood why the DJ Shadows of the world spend what--to me--seems like hours scouring for records and then isolating the sounds they want, when they could just hire someone for a few hours, get them to play exactly what they want, and then dissect that all they like. The effort put into obscuring the original sound source (something I wish Shadow had done a bit more, after I finally heard the David Axelrod albums he plundered from) seems more labour intensive then just going out and getting the real thing.
Either way, I'm glad Tobin did, and I'm convinced it has something to do with why Foley Room towers over his other albums. Even though he disagrees.
Finally, comparisons to Matmos are obvious, but there is always something with Matmos that feels like work: like I have to know what narrative they're trying to create before I hear it; like I have to know what components went into it to appreciate it; like it's all an academic exercise. That's less true of last year's The Rose Has Teeth..., but I always feel like I should like them because: a) they're really smart and funny guys; b) they've been right-hand men to Bjork and c) did I mention they're really smart and funny guys?
With Tobin, even though we have mutual friends, I don't feel any obligation to like his music for any reason other than that Foley Room is totally enrapturing.
That said, having seen a DJ set of his before, I'm not convinced that tomorrow's show at the Opera House will be the bee's knees--7.1 surround sound notwithstanding (explained at the end of the interview)--but I'm still curious to see what happens.
Amon Tobin
April 10, 2007
Locale: phone interview, having just checked into his London hotel
As someone who previously only used elements sampled from vinyl records—why have you waited this long to bring in other elements?
I think there’s still a lot to be explored with vinyl samples. It wasn’t a compromise to use samples from vinyl. It wasn’t like I couldn’t get a hold of microphones.
It was really because when you sample something that was in a different musical context before, and you adapt that and change it into a new piece of music, there is an energy—I believe, anyway—that you keep from where the sound came from. When it’s put unnaturally into an arrangement with lots of other things pulling in different directions, there’s a dynamic that happens there.
It’s a lot to do with the fact that you’re taking someone’s finest hour, on say a set of drums, and you’re taking a few seconds of that momentum and then extending it. The way you program the rhythm to extend it, the energy of that tiny little second is stretched out as far as you like.
But how do you compare that with using the people you work with on this record, bringing people in for a day or a couple of days?
I go from one extreme to another. It’s the same with digital or analog. I always wondered which way I should go, and it turns out that a bit of both is the best for me and my experience.
I was quite militant about only using vinyl and only using samples. But it’s important not to get too trapped in your own ideas of what you should be doing. To be honest, it’s not so much about source material, because I’m pretty sure you could find anything I recorded on vinyl somewhere. People have recorded lions and tigers before, trains and robots and all that.
The bonus for me personally was that I was able to learn a lot more about the music making process and about recording from that startpoint. It was much more to do with a personal education, really, on making and recording music.
Do you feel like you have more control when it’s you pointing the microphone at the animals or the musicians? As opposed to trying to find a piece of vinyl that suits the thing you have in mind, you can just go out and do it. Does this approach have more immediacy?
To some extent. You win and you lose. There are things that you find by chance on vinyl that you never imagined, and vice versa when you go out with mics. A lot of emphasis is put on the origins of sound in sample-based music, and I really think it’s important, but it’s even more important what you do with these sounds: how they’re put together, manipulated and arranged. If you think about it, lots of people have said that I have a particular sound, which is odd when you consider that all my material comes from other places.
Not recognizably, though.
No, because I think my job, my creative output, is how it’s all put together. I think the sounds could come from vinyl, from musicians, from field recordings, but the reason I did it this way was for selfish reasons. I just wanted to learn about it. It’s not because I think it’s a better or more effective technique. I still go back to records for inspiration and sample material.
Does vinyl play any role on this album?
Definitely. There are vinyl samples in there too.
Considering everything you just said, for me as a listener—as someone for whom this process is very alien—there’s something very tactile to this album compared to your other works. There is something that sounds more hands-on. I purposely didn’t read the liner notes or watch the DVD before I heard the record; I just wanted to absorb it. And for whatever intangible reason, it really struck me right away.
That’s great. There are a few things that have played into that, as well as the sound sources. I think I’ve learned a lot more about production in the last couple of years. I know a lot more about engineering. I still have a lot more to learn, but I have had a certain amount of progress. I was able as well to plan ahead a bit more, as far as getting different elements and textures from different places with a view of putting them together. Rather than wrestling with extracting the things you don’t want from a vinyl sample, which is what I’d normally be doing.
Also, you can’t take away the fact that the musicians who were involved were very proficient and couldn’t help but add their musicality and their talent to the process. The record benefits a lot from that, and you have to give credit to people like Patrick Watson and Kronos Quartet and Sarah Page and Norsola from Godspeed and all these people. Even though I was trying very hard to get them to work objectively and do very simple things, they were all so overqualified for the role I was giving them, that they couldn’t help but put something extra in there. That probably comes across in the record.
From checking the liner notes, however, you take all the compositional credit. Did all the melodic ideas come from you, were you directing them the entire time?
Mainly what I was trying to get them to do was unusual things with their instruments, in ways they weren’t used to using them. So we got the Kronos Quartet to all play the same violin at once, all four of them. We got them to do improvisation, which they never do. They’re all classically trained, and improvisation isn’t something they’re into. Norsola was playing her cello with a sword at one point.
The idea was to get source material that was pretty basic. I got drones mostly from the Kronos Quartet. Patrick Watson gave me little piano melodies that I then cut up and re-arranged, and even mixed them with some vinyl piano to make different melodies from. It was all treating everything in the same way: a rock falling, a musician, a vinyl sample. All these were treated as an objective source, and then applying the arrangements and the creation of the music afterwards.
It’s also the reason I worked so much in a foley room with Vid Cousins, who was really a technical hand in the recording of this project. Because I don’t know anything about microphones! Vid was really the man who pointed me in the direction of these particular mics, for example. The idea was to give myself as much flexibility as possible after the recordings were made.
Everything was recorded in a very dead space, and I could then either place that sound in a cathedral or a small chamber if I wanted to. It left a lot of room. The same with the musicians. I tried to get them to do things that I could then manipulate and form melodies and make songs from.
Having said that, I did at times ask them to play specific melodies. Sarah Page, who played the harp, I asked her to play a melody that appeared on a record. That happened every now and again, but I felt that was a compromise on my part. I really wanted to think about the tunes after I had all the sounds.
How long was the time divided: how long recording versus treating everything later?
We spent about four months on the road recording everything we could. About a month or so just archiving the sounds. We did it all on tape, so that gave another element. There’s creativity with tape: you can manipulate it as it’s going into the computer, so there’s a bit of that going on as well. Then I put everything into different sections and could work with it. Then it was processing, and then it was the arrangements. I think I started that in January and it went to October.
Now, was that more intense than previous records?
Yeah, because it was all done in different stages. It wasn’t harder, but it was more time consuming. And it was really good fun, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun making an album before.
It sounds like an inherently more social process than anything you’ve done before.
It really was. I made new friends. I got out of the house (laughs) and had some road trips.
Other than Kronos in San Francisco, how much of it was made outside of Montreal?
Not much. I used some drums from a session in Seattle with Michael Shrieve [sp?] and Kevin Sawka. We were trying to get to Texas to record the bats under the bridge in Austin. Also Terry Bozzio lives down there as well, and I was hoping to record some of his drums, because he’s obviously pretty wicked. But we did what was practical in the time frame we had. A lot of it was done in Montreal, in my flat.
Did you turn it into a dead space?
No, that was Ubisoft, actually [the Montreal gaming company that commissioned him to do the soundtrack for Splinter Cell]. They let me go in there after hours into their foley room to do the really clinical recording. The harp and some of the guitars and Patrick [Watson]’s stuff were recorded in my flat. There were a few things at McGill University as well.
The wasps?
That’s right, much to the dismay of John, who was having to cope with us coming in with various insects into his clean laboratory.
What did you learn from working with [drummer] Stef Schneider [of Bell Orchestre]?
He was perfect for this, because he’s like a foley drummer. He was playing drums with all kinds of different paraphernalia, and contributed an incredible amount to the record. He turned up with vats of water and various percussion we could dip into the water. He was throwing lentils and chick peas over skins of drums and playing with egg whisks, and having a blast, really.
Did most of that come from him?
Definitely. A whole ton of toys. He just rocked out. There were a whole bunch of things that we just tried, and then made some choices with the material that was there.
What was the most ridiculous thing you wanted to try?
The wasps were pretty silly. There was no need for that, really! We did some things that sounded like they would be great, but turned out to be pretty bad. We didn’t get much from that radar. It seemed cool, but I didn’t get the sounds I thought I would. That happens all the time, which is part of the process: trial and error. I have meters and meters of tape that weren’t used. Which I’m sure I could still go through and find new things.
How did you coax some of the animal sounds, or were you waiting around a lot?
There was an awful lot of waiting around. Animals aren’t always the most co-operative things. They have their own agenda. You turn up and hope they do something. There was a certain amount of coaxing, but we either got lucky or we didn’t.
Who’s playing the Hammond?
Actually, I played some of that. Oh shit, I wasn’t actually going to admit that. You caught me—I’m tired! But there are bits of Hammond from records as well. I wanted to make sure that when I did the liner notes I left things as ambiguous as possible. I didn’t want people to get all trainspotty about it. A lot of the musicians are actually confused about which parts they played, because the idea was to look at all these things as objective sources.
Does anyone come to you and say, “Where the hell am I? I thought I played on your record!”
(laughs) I was a bit worried about that, actually. I didn’t use everything I recorded, obviously, and I’m sure there are people credited that wouldn’t recognize their sounds at all. Partially because a lot of it was manipulated beyond recognition anyway, or mixed with other sounds. A lot of the sounds recorded were done with a view to mixing them with another sound to make something new. Particularly for brass stuff and some of the engines and robots and stuff. The recordings were made with a view to changing them in the first place.
I do love the wasp/guitar/motorbike combination. Did you learn more about instruments themselves, or trying your own hand at keyboards, percussion or strings?
Not really. I had such a wealth of talent around, I didn’t feel the need to jump in at any stage. I have my limits. I also appreciate the fact that people have a different outlook to give, and it’s best to give people room to breathe. I tried not to direct people too much. Maybe I’d have one or two ideas I really wanted to get across, but I spent a lot of time saying, ‘Here are some chains. Mess around with them on your instrument and see what happens.’
In my research, I found one quote of yours where you said that using session musicians would be settling for second best, compared to what you could plunder from existing vinyl. Has that impression changed?
Well, not really. I really think that if I’d gone in with a song, and said to people, ‘Let’s play this song. You do that beat, you do that bass line, and off we go.’ I don’t know if that would be as effective as trying to find these things on little slivers of vinyl. For me personally—please understand that I’m only talking about my own way of working, this doesn’t apply to everyone at all—I work most effectively like that.
The approach here with musicians was just to get basic source material. It was very different from getting a session player in to play a bass line. It was more like, ‘Go crazy on the drums, play whatever rhythm you want, because all I want is the sound and the tone of the drums and the different textures that I can then cut up and re-arrange later.’ Stef Schneider is an amazing drummer, but god knows what he thought when he heard the album, because the patterns are completely different. It’s all been cut into little pieces and re-ordered.
Compositionally, I find it different from a lot of your other stuff. Did Splinter Cell change the way you thought about composition, or did these sources effect the way you write? Or do you even notice a difference?
On some songs there were some familiar structures for me, where things start in one direction and then take a left turn and then resolve in the end. I like the big dramatic crescendos though, because I love a bit of drama! ‘Always’ has a verse/chorus thing and a bit of a pop sensibility to it. I always admire people who can pull that off. Every now and again I have a stab at it.
It’s interesting to me how that track is near the end of the album. It’s like going through this journey and then having this sweet at the end.
It was a bit of a fuck-you putting pressure on me for a single. This record wasn’t about that. As much as I enjoy three-and-a-half minute songs, I didn’t want that to be the second song on the album and then off we go into an epic number. I like doing it, but like you say, it’s a treat in the middle of some more obscure arrangements.
One of the other things I like about this album is its lack of concept, treating sound as an end in itself, leaving the narratives open for the listener. As much as I enjoy Matmos, for example, at times that does get trainspotty for me, or harder to appreciate without knowing what narrative they’re putting on it.
I was aware of all this when I was making the record, and comparisons would be drawn with other people using field recordings. It wasn’t too much of a hang-up. Basically, I want the music to come first, the satisfaction I get from making music. Whatever idea I have to begin with, I don’t want it to restrict where the song could go or how good it could be. I don’t want to be saying, ‘Well, I’d like to do that, but it doesn’t fit into my concept.’ It’s not going to happen. I want the music to be king, and everything else just facilitates that.
What do you think this project opens up for you? What comes next?
Who knows? I’m excited to try something new for myself. I have learned an awful lot. I hope I can apply these things I’ve learned to the next project I make and keep trying to improve and keep myself interested. I feel like my whole output over the years has been a learning curve. I focused on one area for a long time because there was a lot to explore. Maybe in time I’ll look at different areas.
What does a 7.1 surround sound DJ set entail?
It’s just a regular DJ set with better sound than normal. A problem I’ve often encountered is that you have this big stack at the front blowing everyone away, and at the back it’s all muffled and no one can hear it properly. Only in the middle do a few people get a decent sound. Considering that when I play there’s not much of a stage show, not much to look at, we’ve concentrated on making the event about the sound, trying to make it a different musical environment for people to listen.
But you haven’t mixed any of your own material in 7.1?
No, not at all. We’re using a system being developed by Dolby which is pretty effective. It takes things that are in stereo, or the higher frequencies and spreads them around the room. You can put any stereo signal through it. We’re using that in conjunction with a few other things that my soundman Vid has developed himself. It’s a pretty interesting effect. It’s a lot of bass, which is important, and a lot of detail that surrounds the room. It envelopes you a bit more in a three dimensional experience.
Had you seen other people do this, or did you just want to try it?
I tried it on the Splinter Cell tour in 5.1, and we had a few phasing issues while trying it out. A lot of those tracks were mixed in 5.1. We tried it, and it turns out that it’s better in 7.1, because the speakers aren’t pointing directly at each other. You have far fewer phase cancellation issues and it works a lot better.
-end-
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Review round-up April 07
Some reviews today, some new, some neglected.
A review of RJD2's The Third Hand from today's Eye Weekly.
A review of Low's Drums and Guns from the new issue of Magnet. I have other reviews in the print edition (my debut issue with them), but this is the only one online. Click here, then on record reviews and you'll see it; there's no direct link. Also: I contribute two reviews to their "75 Lost Classics" feature in the print edition (writing about Royal City and Jerk With a Bomb) but for some reason my byline isn't included.
A review of Tinariwen's Aman Iman: Water is Life from earlier this month in Eye.
A review of Vandermark 5's A Discontinuous Line from Eye back in Feburary.
A review of Deerhoof's Friend Opportunity from Eye waaaay back in January.
Some reviews from the mainstream daily Kitchener-Waterloo Record: Amon Tobin, Neil Young, Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid, Wayne Petti, Rheostatics Tribute Album.
Amon Tobin – Foley Room (Ninja Tune/Outside)
There are very few music makers who can lay claim to creating five albums in ten years without ever coming near a microphone. But Montreal turntablist Amon Tobin comes from the school of recombinant composition: every sound on Tobin's albums would be from a snippet sampled from an obscure vinyl release and morphed beyond recognition. Several different saxophone solos from different players might be spliced together and digitally processed to create something entirely new.
While technically impressive, the pressing question was always simply: why? Wouldn't it be faster to hire a few musicians for a day and cut up what they give you?
Tobin decided to find out, by inviting many of his immensely talented Montreal neighbours, including Patrick Watson and Bell Orchestre’s wildly inventive drummer Stef Schneider, to create sounds that he could then modify and shape into a beautiful and befuddling compositional concoction.
But sticking with mere musicians would make his job too easy, so Tobin set out to get sounds from various insects, safari animals, machinery and motorcycles to throw into the mix as well.Most of the process is shown in a gorgeous 20 minute documentary on an accompanying DVD.
All this makes for interesting liner notes, but Foley Room succeeds entirely on musical terms. You don't have to know what you're listening to in order to appreciate the unpredictable sonic narratives that Tobin spins here. He doesn’t play by any rules: not Tobin’s beat-splicing past, certainly not conventional songcraft, and not even the avant-garde world of musique concrete.
Crackles and growls and scrapes, oh my! Sometimes they coalesce around rhythms both jazzy and harsh, the likes of which Winnipeg breakbeat renegade Venetian Snares might unleash; sometimes they’re content to tickle your ear lightly with honky tonk pianos playing classical motifs, spy movie surf guitars, or the sound of the Kronos Quartet crawling inside their violins.
Foley Room is unquestionably dense, but it never feels like a chore or a conceptual exercise. Tobin is enraptured by the possibilities of sound, and Foley Room is just as rewarding at a low volume as it is when you magnify the minutiae he’s spliced into every track. (March 29, 2007)
Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise/Warner)
No one needs another live album from Neil Young. The man has almost as many official concert documents as he does original albums, with scads of bootlegs to appease insatiable collectors.
Yet this live performance—surfacing now for its first official release—is one of those ultra-rare concert recordings that stands on it own: much more than just alternate takes of well-loved studio recordings, much more than for the historical context through which it's inevitably perceived.
We're so used to hearing Young with his various bands—Crazy Horse, the International Harvesters—that we picture him as little more than a perfunctory guitarist, one whose sloppy solos are more about soul than technique. Here, however, Young sits alone on stage, proving to be an impressively delicate self-accompanist on both guitar and piano.
Hearing songs like Cowgirl in the Sand and A Man Needs a Maid stripped down to just one instrument and Young’s plaintive voice is a revelation; even Down By the River, the most loathsome song in his entire discography, sounds tender and heartfelt here.
But the biggest thrill here is knowing that only six of these songs had been released before he played this show. This audience had never heard Heart of Gold, Needle and Damage Done, or Old Man. And until now, only devout bootleggers have heard the songs Bad Fog of Loneliness (written for Johnny Cash’s TV show) and the clap-a-long kitchen party hoedown of Dance Dance Dance.
Those bootleggers might want to snap up this official release anyway, because it comes with a feature-length concert DVD, with Super 8 footage of the actual show mixed in with home movies. (March 29, 2007)
Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid – Tongues (Domino/Outside)
Two musicians, two generations, two radically different approaches. Steve Reid is a drummer who started out at Motown (that's him on Dancing in the Street) and had many a musical giant stand on his shoulders: Miles Davis, James Brown and Fela Kuti, for starters. Kieran Hebden is a young Brit who's been remarkably prolific in the last ten years, first with the instrumental band Fridge, and then a flurry of captivating jazzy electronic albums under the name FourTet.
The idea of a collaboration is certainly intriguing, though with it comes the unlikely challenge of experimenting with laptops and banks of samples. Though the liner notes claim that this was all done live, without editing of overdubs, how spontanteous and improvisatory can Hebden actually be in such a non-physical environment?
To compensate for these concerns, Hebden vomits everything he has into the mix, while Reid sounds content just to play along with the ride. Whereas FourTet albums strike a near-perfect balance between abstract melodicism, abrasive density and jazzy grooves, here Hebden sounds mindlessly adrift while attempting to match a master.
At its best, it's mildly interesting. At its worst, you'll wish it actually was your CD skipping instead of an intended outcome. (April 5, 2007)
Wayne Petti – City Lights Align (Outside)
When Cuff the Duke released their debut album in 2002, it was a remarkable achievement for a band from Oshawa who were barely 20 years old, informed as it was by classic country music, 80s new wave folk and epic post-rock of the late 90s. That they pulled it off with economic arrangements and colourful textures only made it that much more astounding. To this day, it stands as one of the great debut albums from the last decade. (It’s recently been reissued on Outside Music.)
Sadly, very little of that invention was heard on the eponymous follow-up, which is why it’s such a relief to hear this stellar solo album from vocalist/guitarist Wayne Petti. Working once again with producer Paul Aucoin of the Hylozoists, Petti and Aucoin remedy much that went wrong on the Cuff the Duke album by recording quickly and sparsely. There’s very little instrumentation here, but Petti’s songwriting is strong enough that little embellishment is needed. His suburban cowboy melodies here sound stronger without a band behind them, his guitars filling every corner of the sonic spectrum on their own. We also hear the more haunting shades of Petti’s voice, and when he breaks into whistling or a tender falsetto, he’s never sounded lovelier or lonelier. (April 5, 2007)
Rheostatics Tribute: The Secret Sessions – Various Artists (Zunior.com)
When they called it quits last month, the Rheostatics left a long legacy over Canadian music of the last 20 years. They inspired one of the most devout audiences imaginable, and along the way lent a helping hand to dozens of young bands and musicians.
So when it became known that the end was nigh, several of their highest-profile disciples rallied to surprise them with a parting gift of a tribute album. The cast assembled here, each of whom toured with or collaborated with the band at some point, is more than up to the task. With the exception of the Weakerthans and the Barenaked Ladies, both of whom play it straight with the most conventional Rheos songs, every other act reinvents the material to suit their own individual voice.
Prior to this I’m hard pressed to recall a single recorded Rheostatics cover, and with good reason: it’s not easy to do. The original performance of Shaved Head, for example, seems so singular and unique that covering it seems certain folly. Yet By Divine Right strip the song of its arching drama and make it more of a meditative mood piece, which suits the lyric just as well. Cuff the Duke pull off a similar feat with Claire, getting to the lonely heart of the song without any of the lush ornamentation of the original. Kate Fenner tackles the suburban desolation of Stolen Car with a rich, warm empathy, in one of her finest vocal performances in years.
Some of the Rheos’ peers reform for the occasion: Sarah Harmer’s Weeping Tile, The Inbreds, The Local Rabbits, and King Cobb Steelie all pay homage, while the recently resurrected Wooden Stars are also here.
You don’t have to be a Rheostatics fan to appreciate this; if you’ve ever enjoyed any of the aforementioned acts, then you’ve already absorbed a small kernel of what made this band so beloved. (April 12, 2007)
A review of RJD2's The Third Hand from today's Eye Weekly.
A review of Low's Drums and Guns from the new issue of Magnet. I have other reviews in the print edition (my debut issue with them), but this is the only one online. Click here, then on record reviews and you'll see it; there's no direct link. Also: I contribute two reviews to their "75 Lost Classics" feature in the print edition (writing about Royal City and Jerk With a Bomb) but for some reason my byline isn't included.
A review of Tinariwen's Aman Iman: Water is Life from earlier this month in Eye.
A review of Vandermark 5's A Discontinuous Line from Eye back in Feburary.
A review of Deerhoof's Friend Opportunity from Eye waaaay back in January.
Some reviews from the mainstream daily Kitchener-Waterloo Record: Amon Tobin, Neil Young, Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid, Wayne Petti, Rheostatics Tribute Album.
Amon Tobin – Foley Room (Ninja Tune/Outside)
There are very few music makers who can lay claim to creating five albums in ten years without ever coming near a microphone. But Montreal turntablist Amon Tobin comes from the school of recombinant composition: every sound on Tobin's albums would be from a snippet sampled from an obscure vinyl release and morphed beyond recognition. Several different saxophone solos from different players might be spliced together and digitally processed to create something entirely new.
While technically impressive, the pressing question was always simply: why? Wouldn't it be faster to hire a few musicians for a day and cut up what they give you?
Tobin decided to find out, by inviting many of his immensely talented Montreal neighbours, including Patrick Watson and Bell Orchestre’s wildly inventive drummer Stef Schneider, to create sounds that he could then modify and shape into a beautiful and befuddling compositional concoction.
But sticking with mere musicians would make his job too easy, so Tobin set out to get sounds from various insects, safari animals, machinery and motorcycles to throw into the mix as well.Most of the process is shown in a gorgeous 20 minute documentary on an accompanying DVD.
All this makes for interesting liner notes, but Foley Room succeeds entirely on musical terms. You don't have to know what you're listening to in order to appreciate the unpredictable sonic narratives that Tobin spins here. He doesn’t play by any rules: not Tobin’s beat-splicing past, certainly not conventional songcraft, and not even the avant-garde world of musique concrete.
Crackles and growls and scrapes, oh my! Sometimes they coalesce around rhythms both jazzy and harsh, the likes of which Winnipeg breakbeat renegade Venetian Snares might unleash; sometimes they’re content to tickle your ear lightly with honky tonk pianos playing classical motifs, spy movie surf guitars, or the sound of the Kronos Quartet crawling inside their violins.
Foley Room is unquestionably dense, but it never feels like a chore or a conceptual exercise. Tobin is enraptured by the possibilities of sound, and Foley Room is just as rewarding at a low volume as it is when you magnify the minutiae he’s spliced into every track. (March 29, 2007)
Neil Young – Live at Massey Hall 1971 (Reprise/Warner)
No one needs another live album from Neil Young. The man has almost as many official concert documents as he does original albums, with scads of bootlegs to appease insatiable collectors.
Yet this live performance—surfacing now for its first official release—is one of those ultra-rare concert recordings that stands on it own: much more than just alternate takes of well-loved studio recordings, much more than for the historical context through which it's inevitably perceived.
We're so used to hearing Young with his various bands—Crazy Horse, the International Harvesters—that we picture him as little more than a perfunctory guitarist, one whose sloppy solos are more about soul than technique. Here, however, Young sits alone on stage, proving to be an impressively delicate self-accompanist on both guitar and piano.
Hearing songs like Cowgirl in the Sand and A Man Needs a Maid stripped down to just one instrument and Young’s plaintive voice is a revelation; even Down By the River, the most loathsome song in his entire discography, sounds tender and heartfelt here.
But the biggest thrill here is knowing that only six of these songs had been released before he played this show. This audience had never heard Heart of Gold, Needle and Damage Done, or Old Man. And until now, only devout bootleggers have heard the songs Bad Fog of Loneliness (written for Johnny Cash’s TV show) and the clap-a-long kitchen party hoedown of Dance Dance Dance.
Those bootleggers might want to snap up this official release anyway, because it comes with a feature-length concert DVD, with Super 8 footage of the actual show mixed in with home movies. (March 29, 2007)
Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid – Tongues (Domino/Outside)
Two musicians, two generations, two radically different approaches. Steve Reid is a drummer who started out at Motown (that's him on Dancing in the Street) and had many a musical giant stand on his shoulders: Miles Davis, James Brown and Fela Kuti, for starters. Kieran Hebden is a young Brit who's been remarkably prolific in the last ten years, first with the instrumental band Fridge, and then a flurry of captivating jazzy electronic albums under the name FourTet.
The idea of a collaboration is certainly intriguing, though with it comes the unlikely challenge of experimenting with laptops and banks of samples. Though the liner notes claim that this was all done live, without editing of overdubs, how spontanteous and improvisatory can Hebden actually be in such a non-physical environment?
To compensate for these concerns, Hebden vomits everything he has into the mix, while Reid sounds content just to play along with the ride. Whereas FourTet albums strike a near-perfect balance between abstract melodicism, abrasive density and jazzy grooves, here Hebden sounds mindlessly adrift while attempting to match a master.
At its best, it's mildly interesting. At its worst, you'll wish it actually was your CD skipping instead of an intended outcome. (April 5, 2007)
Wayne Petti – City Lights Align (Outside)
When Cuff the Duke released their debut album in 2002, it was a remarkable achievement for a band from Oshawa who were barely 20 years old, informed as it was by classic country music, 80s new wave folk and epic post-rock of the late 90s. That they pulled it off with economic arrangements and colourful textures only made it that much more astounding. To this day, it stands as one of the great debut albums from the last decade. (It’s recently been reissued on Outside Music.)
Sadly, very little of that invention was heard on the eponymous follow-up, which is why it’s such a relief to hear this stellar solo album from vocalist/guitarist Wayne Petti. Working once again with producer Paul Aucoin of the Hylozoists, Petti and Aucoin remedy much that went wrong on the Cuff the Duke album by recording quickly and sparsely. There’s very little instrumentation here, but Petti’s songwriting is strong enough that little embellishment is needed. His suburban cowboy melodies here sound stronger without a band behind them, his guitars filling every corner of the sonic spectrum on their own. We also hear the more haunting shades of Petti’s voice, and when he breaks into whistling or a tender falsetto, he’s never sounded lovelier or lonelier. (April 5, 2007)
Rheostatics Tribute: The Secret Sessions – Various Artists (Zunior.com)
When they called it quits last month, the Rheostatics left a long legacy over Canadian music of the last 20 years. They inspired one of the most devout audiences imaginable, and along the way lent a helping hand to dozens of young bands and musicians.
So when it became known that the end was nigh, several of their highest-profile disciples rallied to surprise them with a parting gift of a tribute album. The cast assembled here, each of whom toured with or collaborated with the band at some point, is more than up to the task. With the exception of the Weakerthans and the Barenaked Ladies, both of whom play it straight with the most conventional Rheos songs, every other act reinvents the material to suit their own individual voice.
Prior to this I’m hard pressed to recall a single recorded Rheostatics cover, and with good reason: it’s not easy to do. The original performance of Shaved Head, for example, seems so singular and unique that covering it seems certain folly. Yet By Divine Right strip the song of its arching drama and make it more of a meditative mood piece, which suits the lyric just as well. Cuff the Duke pull off a similar feat with Claire, getting to the lonely heart of the song without any of the lush ornamentation of the original. Kate Fenner tackles the suburban desolation of Stolen Car with a rich, warm empathy, in one of her finest vocal performances in years.
Some of the Rheos’ peers reform for the occasion: Sarah Harmer’s Weeping Tile, The Inbreds, The Local Rabbits, and King Cobb Steelie all pay homage, while the recently resurrected Wooden Stars are also here.
You don’t have to be a Rheostatics fan to appreciate this; if you’ve ever enjoyed any of the aforementioned acts, then you’ve already absorbed a small kernel of what made this band so beloved. (April 12, 2007)
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