Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

PATRICK SISSON

Meet Jabber Jury Founders Kevin Wielgus and Angelo Rago: GAVEL NOT INCLUDED: Introducing a virtual tribunal where you can weigh in sans summons

Article
Chicago Magazine
January 2011
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It’s fitting that a website about arguments emerged from one.

In the fall of 2009, the Chicago tech entrepreneurs Kevin Wielgus and Angelo Rago were at the Improv in Schaumburg when Rago’s then-girlfriend, whom he’d been dating for only a few weeks, received a phone call: Her parents were headed to the hospital. She rushed off; he stayed for the show.

At a bar later that night, Rago began receiving angry text messages: He was insensitive; his true colors were showing. Rago was amused. His girlfriend’s father had a bad case of hemorrhoids—hardly life threatening. Rago knew she was telling friends about how terrible he was, but from where he was sitting, he was in the right. Wielgus concurred. “I bet everyone in here would agree with you,” Rago remembers him saying. They then told the story to a crowd of fellow patrons, observing how the general opinion shifted as details emerged.

The situation inspired the duo to create Jabber Jury, an online courtroom that draws from such pop culture concepts as TV’s Tosh.0 and The People’s Court. They call the model “conflictainment.” Both parties in an argument—anything from husband-wife bickering to whether a friend dresses inappropriately—submit videos explaining their sides. The videos, uploaded to Jabber Jury’s proprietary system, form the basis of a case, and each party can add rebuttals and invite witnesses to submit video testimony. Registered users can leave comments, spread the case via social media, and vote on the outcome.

“We’ve all been guilty of being the voyeur and listening in on a couple at the next table,” says Wielgus.
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Gang Signs: Post-punk legends Gang of Four revisit old principles and crank up the transistor amps on Content

Feature
EQ
January 2011
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Last October, Gang of Four guitarist and producer Andy Gill delivered a lecture on recording to students at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The influential post-punk guitarist wasn’t afraid to be self-effacing: He played one of his band’s lesser-known songs, an early ’90s cover of Bob Marley’s “Soul Rebel,” and asked students to tell him what was wrong. He waited until one said it sounded like “catwalk music” before he agreed.

“[Complex production] can sound amazing, and the programming can be fantastic,” says Gill, “but to me, it’s falling in love with the samples and MIDI programming and forgetting what you’re about. It’s not Gang of Four music. It could be great for something else.”

Content, which Gill recorded over the past two years at his own Beauchamp Studio in Central London, is a return to form—aggressive, prickly, and muscular. Gill worked over song ideas with founding member and vocalist Jon King, perfecting tight, rhythmic arrangements before bringing on newer members Thomas McNeice (bass) and Mark Heaney (drums) for recording.

“One of the beauties of guitar/bass/drums is you have a lot of space,” says Gill. “More traditional pop music has this hierarchical, pyramid structure, with lead vocals on top, guitar below it, and then keyboards and backing vocals, all meant to support the lead vocals. One of the things Gang of Four did was put everything side by side. It all worked together and created a rhythmic network, which fed into our aesthetic ideas.”
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Young and the Restless: With their sophisticated second album, Chicago rock upstarts Smith Westerns prove they’re all grown up

Interview
Nylon Guys
December/January

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It’s early in the afternoon and Cullen Omori is sitting behind a small table at Intelligentsia, a coffee shop in Chicago’s Loop business district, sipping a cup of black coffee and occasionally brushing back his long, dark hair like Mitch Kramer from Dazed and Confused. His bandmates in Smith Westerns— his brother, bassist Cameron, and guitarist Max Kakacek—are driving around in their white tour van; they couldn’t find parking downtown, so they just dropped their frontman off to do the interview solo.

The kids, it seems, are all right. But once you listen to Smith Western’s sophisticated sophomore album, Dye it Blonde, a blazing set of fuzzed-out, tightly wound guitar pop inspired by everything from Zeppelin and Big Star to Suede, you’ll have trouble referring to them as kids. They’re understandably sick of hearing it. Sure, the guys released their self-titled debut in 2009 when they were still in high school, and, yes, they still crash at their parents’ when they’re not touring, and, no, they can’t legally order drinks. But take in Omori’s soaring, wistful lyrics (“I want to grow old before I grow up,” on “All Die Young”) or hear him talk about life on the road, surrounded by examples of arrested development, and a more experienced voice emerges.

“The idea of the lyrics on Dye it Blonde is about wanting, whether certain things are attainable or not,” says the 20-year-old. “I want this, I want that. It doesn’t get me off to write redemption or drug songs. I feel like those are played out. If you like to get fucked up, that’s your business—you don’t have to write every song about it. The lyrics here talk about romanticism. A lot of other bands write about how great it is to be young. But I’ve done all these romanticized things. It’s not that great. Is it going to get better?”
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Out of the Lab: Stereolab chanteuse Laetitia Sadier aims for indie-pop simplicity in her debut solo effort, The Trip

Feature
EQ Magazine
December 2010
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A bedrock element of Stereolab’s continental cool, Laetitia Sadier’s voice is unmistakable. Hearing its breadth of variation on The Trip, from the “grey disco” of her “Un Soir, Un Chien” cover to the languid “Natural Child,” reveals the depth and fluidity that can be uncovered in a new context. For her first solo album, Sadier experimented with a new setting while keeping a foot anchored on comfortable ground, splitting recording time between Emmanuel Mario in the UK, who worked with her group Monade, and lo-fi singer/songwriter Richard Swift, who opened for Stereolab’s last U.S. tour and works out of his Portland studio.

“I wanted to have a new sound and come across something different,” says Sadier. “I was looking forward to working with Richard because we had never worked together before, so that gave me scope to learn something new. But I didn’t really have a specific preconceived idea. I wanted to be surprised! And I was, working with Richard.”

With a philosophy that aims to “take photographs rather than make a painting,” Swift set up his studio as a spontaneous, low pressure environment. Swift, who played drums and guitar on many tracks, Sadier, and other contributors to the Portland sessions worked together in one open room, without talkback. Directness and simplicity were key; only about a dozen tracks were used for each song, and while Swift admits there’s some ear candy on the record, the team was more focused on stripping back and streamlining. Synthetic pulses and film score atmospheres coexisted without crowding out the music.

“It’s a really loose recording situation,” says Swift. “Half the time we’re actually listening to records [Tom Tom Club was a favorite], talking and hanging out. I’ve always felt you need to create an environment where the clock isn’t ticking, it’s loose, and you can work where you want to. I’ve always gotten the best results that way, rather than hammering it over take after take and working yourself half to death.”
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Bruce Haack: Farad

Review
Pitchfork
December 3, 2010
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7.1

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Reissue releases usually oversell the now-clichéd story of a misunderstood musical genius. Farad, Stones Throw’s retrospective of electronic music eccentric Bruce Haack, does peddle that tale to a certain degree, much like the 2004 documentary Haack: The King of Techno. But the real pleasure of the disc, covering music released during the later part of his career from 1970-82, is that it doesn’t try too hard to define Haack’s compositions and philosophy or spend extensive time wondering, “What if?” It instead exposes the raw components of his odd career, an improbable, colorful circuit board resembling the wiring to some Rube Goldberg device.

A musical prodigy from a Canadian mining town, Haack was all-encompassing in his approach. He had composed far-out children’s music and pop songs, experimented with classical/synthesizer hybrids, and hand-crafted a studio’s worth of electronic instruments (including a proto-vocoder, Farad, named after inventor Michael Faraday) by the end of the ’60s. Few can claim to have demoed electronic instruments for Fred Rogers and written a song covered by Beck (“Funky Little Song”, not included on this album). But his scattered biography goes a long way toward explaining the playful weirdness and the philosophical underpinnings that made Haack so refreshing. Even on his psychedelic excursions or the stone cold electro funk of “Stand Up Lazarus,” there’s a sense of wonder and play, and he doesn’t stay perpetually plugged-in, letting folk and country twang find its way into his music.

The tone of his tracks veered from suspended, bubbly escapes (“Rain of Earth”) and silly sing-alongs (“Maybe This Song”) to a Kraftwerk-worthy electro jam with a pre-Def Jam Russell Simmons (1982’s “Party Machine”) or the Byrds-like tinge of “National Anthem to the Moon,” one of a handful of tracks on the comp taken from his 1970 album The Electric Lucifer. Haack took to the vocoder like Jim Henson took to felt, imitating a guttural monster on “Noon Day Sun” and bending his voice into that of a cheesy lovelorn cyborg on “Rita”. On the jaunty, “Electric to Me Turn,” Haack gets philosophical over steam organ synths, declaring, “Electric to me turn this night/ Reflecting universal light/ All I knew that should be true/ Is reality in you.” Hindsight may render some of these tracks a bit silly or indulgent, but this patchwork of music showcases a true believer and a talent that deserves recognition among his early synthesizer peers.

Restless People: Restless People

Review
Pitchfork
Dec. 2, 2010
Link
6.3

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Right from the start of album opener “Days of Our Lives”, it’s clear Restless People aren’t glass-half-empty types. The song’s mantra about being real is effervescent, an instigation to dance amplified by a combination of airy synths, pseudo-rave bullhorns, and precocious rhythms. The clichéd, pure-positive-thinking lyrics aren’t as important as the sheer motivational energy captured in the songs. Vocalist Michael Bell-Smith apparently won’t settle for any crossed arms or polite head-nods.

The aptly titled Restless People leans heavily on that same amped-up positivity for the duration of its short, 27-minute runtime. An amalgam of members of Tanlines and a few bandmates from Jesse Cohen’s other gig, Professor Murder, the group creates a celebratory, synth-heavy blend of world beat sounds, a fusion that brings together the perkier elements of its composite parts. The band has also mentioned groups like Gorilla Biscuits and Operation Ivy as influences, which aren’t the outliers they may appear to be– check out the shout-along section of “Victimless Crime”– and put the album’s attitude and rapid-fire bursts of energy into perspective. Such a charging-ahead vibe needs plenty of cathartic moments.

Synthetic tribal percussion and horns underlie lyrical musings about changing perspectives on “Little Sky”, a swirling mid-album high point that recalls the Peter Gabriel influence of contemporaries Yeasayer. “Practical Magic” and “Practical Magic II”, back-to-back songs animated by stomping, crisp rhythms, rubbery bass, and an early-90s dance breakdown, build to the big ending on closer “Victimless Crime”.

Restless People never sound rudderless, but even during such a brief album, they sound like they’re treading (or bouncing) over the same ground a little bit. The template doesn’t vary too much, and the lyrics, while just as energizing as any other instrument on the record, don’t have quite the depth they could. High-energy dance music doesn’t require any excuse or explanation, and Restless People rarely provides one.

Electric Sunset: Electric Sunset

Review
Pitchfork
Nov. 12, 2010
Link
6.7

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Both pastoral and a bit generic, the name Electric Sunset could have been spit out of a random indie name generator. But while the sun-dappled synths, warm guitar tones, and smeared vocals of Nic Zwart’s latest project are familiar building blocks, the sum total of this self-titled debut is more than mere pastiche.

Zwart is best known as the frontman for the recently disbanded Desolation Wilderness, which had an unhurried, Galaxie 500-inspired delivery. Both of that group’s main albums, New Universe and White Light Strobing, were tranquil with suggestions of more exuberant, poppy songwriting either outright or under the surface. Zwart takes steps into more energetic and engaging territory on Electric Sunset, dialing up tempos and introducing driving interplay between stripped-down guitar melodies and synths. You can hear his musical progression on “Morning City”, with passages of echoing vocals setting up gentle peaks with crosscurrents of guitar. He still knows how to linger on a note, like the organ-like tones and bass hum of the slow burning “Soda”, but there’s more lift and propulsion with his solo project, airy instead of just misty.

It’s soft-focus psychedelic pop that can feel suspended as it gets blissed-out, since Zwart’s simple and gradual rhythms don’t offer many surprises, and his voice, placed a bit back in the mix, could be more engaging. For every track that develops forward momentum– “Palace” recalls the bubbly sheen and exuberance of Atlas Sound’s “Walkabout”, and “Future Dream” also achieves a Bradford Cox vibe– there are parts that feel a bit restrained. Zwart’s melodies often settle into a slow-motion beauty, but as a whole they’d benefit from a bit more kick, a few explosions instead of just the big crescendos. The album’s nine songs clock in at a concise 32 minutes, but the impression they leave is more general.

Created as Zwart moved from the northwest to San Francisco, Electric Sunset channels that optimistic feeling of the newly arrived, wistful for the past but relishing the blank slate. When he sings, “Lose myself in the cities/ Alone among many,” on “Prayer”, it doesn’t sound like a lament. But as peaceful as he comes across, it also doesn’t sound like he’s fully settled into his routine or his new sound.

Antony and the Johnsons: Comping Performances to Capture Fiery Vocals

Interview
EQ Magazine
November 2010
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Transforming from paper-thin whispers to an emotional tempest, Antony Hegarty’s vocals are revelatory. A centerpiece of Antony and the Johnsons’ intimate chamber pop, Hegarty’s dynamic voice offers a challenge to engineers who want to capture his acrobatic range without clipping parts of the performance. The vocal sessions for the band’s new album Swanlights took place independently from the instrumental tracks, over four months—giving engineer/producer Bryce Goggin, who has worked with the vocalist since 2003, ample time to craft complex voice parts from hundreds of takes.

Hegarty spent extensive time recording, often laying down long, improvised performances that were later cut up and re-assembled. Goggin estimates that for every one note that appears on the record, they recorded 35–40 ideas in his Trout Recording Studio in Brooklyn. With so much editing required to assemble the right vocal track, he decided to track straight to Pro Tools. “It’s amazing compositing with him, because I can play back five passes and he recalls phrases from each one,” says Goggin. “His recall is fantastic, and the objectivity he brings is incredible.”

Hegarty’s flexible, dynamic voice presented a unique miking challenge, due to Hegarty’s intense, quick-changing, near-operatic vocal style, and his method of listening to himself on headphones and reflexively altering vocal melodies to shape and color his performance. Goggin’s standard setup included a Neumann (FET) SM69 microphone, set about two-and-a-half feet back, run through a Langevin AM 16 preamp and Neve 2254 compressors, which were robust enough to handle the extreme dynamic range that the singer put out. “One of my major concerns was his dynamic performance, so I needed a bulletproof mic,” Goggin says.
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Various: Fuck Dance, Let’s Art: Sounds From a New American Underground

Review
Pitchfork
Oct. 6, 2010
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6.9

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As a compilation and mix concept, Fuck Dance, Let’s Art sounds hazy before you even begin discussing the music. Theories crumble, according to the compilation’s own description, when trying explain the current wave of lo-fi, synth-heavy nostalgic bedroom production. And attempting a timely, authoritative statement about a decentralized, Internet-driven scene seems bound to be frustrating. It doesn’t help when some acts are less-than SEO friendly and self-applied genre tags like shitgaze mock the whole genre concept in itself. The “escapist music from the youth of a crumbling superpower” angle even gets a passing reference on the comp’s microsite. After everything this country has been through in the last decade, chillwave is not the soundtrack of American decline.

Where’s the definitive narrative in music built in part from obscured samples and dance rhythms, evocative of a gauzy nostalgia and often decorated with deliberately unpolished cover art? Fuck Dance, Let’s Art doesn’t quite spell it out, if it is there to be spelled out, or offer anything new. Exploring how tools and trends have conspired to bestow authenticity to homespun productions of digital detritus seems beside the point. But its roster–notable omissions such as Neon Indian and Salem non-withstanding–does provide a crash course on this ill-defined movement. The inclusion of a Phenomenal Handclap Band song and HEALTH remix of Crystal Castles provide some broader context and Animal Collective’s glittering “My Girls” touches on a future tribal sound (though the song’s direct embrace of adult pressures seems contrary to the album’s escapist threads). Boundaries are left undefined when you have chillwave acts like Washed Out next to a newer class of artists like Slava and Peter’s House Music.

The title of one of the tracks, Toro Y Moi’s “Fax Shadow”–a suspended song with a distorted, bumpy bass line that sounds as warped as unspooled tape being fed back into a reel–speaks to a shared fetishization of retro technology and a drive to add analog wear to digital production. Along with Small Black’s “Despicable Dogs” and Balam Acab’s “See Birds”, it exemplifies intensely personal songcraft and perhaps touches on early adult uncertainty. As a takeaway from this compilation, it seems to suggest that, as exciting as some of these producers are, in many ways the new underground isn’t that different from the old underground.

Synthetic Pleasures: By stacking reverb-heavy synths and sampled beats, Chromeo created a massive sound fit for an ’80s filmscore

Feature
EQ Magazine
October 2010
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When Patrick Gemayel and David Macklovitch, better known as P-Thugg and Dave 1 of synthfunk duo Chromeo, decamped to a Brooklyn studio to start hammering out Business Casual, they got formal and focused. Trailed by a lingering impression that they’re more about irony than sincere homage—despite collaborations with a blue-eyed soul icon like Daryl Hall—Chromeo wanted to “push the credible music angle.” Filled with intricate songwriting, their latest should lay that debate about legit versus kitsch to rest.

“P got way into piano, chords, and harmonies, and did more interesting things with my vocals and layering sounds,” says Macklovitch. “As paradoxical as it may seem for a Chromeo record, we wanted to have moments that were really moving. We tried to push the music and make it more of a touching, soundtrack-sounding record.”

The backbone of the Montreal band’s music is P-Thugg’s eclectic synthesizer collection, an army of 27 new and vintage pieces divided into MIDI and non-MIDI racks in the studio. During composition and songwriting, he can access anything on the fly from a Yamaha CP7E or Solina String Ensemble to a Korg Trident, Sequential Prophet 5, or Realistic MG-1, allowing for a seamless mix between generations of machines and no patching. The pulsing, strutting slow jam “Don’t Turn the Lights On” exemplifies the layering process at play, which usually begins as a 4-, 8-, or 16-bar demo composed by Gemayel with foundational melodies often tested on piano. The rhythm track was laid down then smothered in new and vintage synth lines; a bassline from the Sequential Circuits Pro-One, a “Chaka Khan-type” melody from a Prophet 8, a held G chord on the Juno, and minor descending chords on the Prophet 5.

“We stay aware of EQing to make sure every frequency is covered at least once in the song with synths or percussive elements,” says Macklovitch. “We call it matching textures.”
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