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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
Link

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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
Link
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
Link

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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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Edible conflict: A cinematic feast of Chicago food moments

Article
Onion A.V. Club Chicago
September 2010
Link

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Chicago’s first Food Film Festival pairs a program of provocative documentaries with a tantalizing array of food, including DMK Burgers and fried cheese curds, which still can’t top the fat content of artificial butter topping. While the “Hog Butcher of the World” label doesn’t exactly scream for a close up, plenty of films set here capture the city and its cuisine. Here are some of the top dining moments in Chicago’s cinematic history.

Lunch at Chez Quis, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
The preternaturally cool teen-philosopher, one of John Hughes’ greatest characters, proves his true guile in what might be one of the movie’s most underappreciated scenes. At a haughty French restaurant downtown called Chez Quis—a play on the down-market pizza parlor Shakey’s—the truant hero Bueller (Matthew Broderick) tries to score a table for his girlfriend Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) and friend Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck), meeting with interference from an incredulous, snooty waiter. Bueller responds by scanning the reservation book and claiming he’s Abe Froman, later revealed to be the “sausage king of Chicago,” and doesn’t back down until he’s seated. The teens enjoy lunch, barely missing Bueller’s father on the way out. The true significance may be in the no-show; if the real Froman had a reservation, why didn’t he show up? Perhaps, as some commentators have suggested, Bueller planted the name as part of an elaborately constructed (not spur-of-the-moment) day downtown on Cameron’s behalf. The interior was shot in Los Angeles, and the exterior was a Gold Coast stand-in at 22 W. Schiller.

Soul Food Cafe scene, The Blues Brothers (1980)
Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) enjoy a few memorable meals on their quest to get the band back together, including a dinner scene (filmed at Chez Paul on Rush Street) where Belushi stuffs his face in a manner that recalls the cafeteria scene in Animal House. But the ultimate has to be the dry white toast and four fried chickens they order at the Soul Food Cafe. The brothers enter looking to re-recruit Matt “Guitar” Murphy and “Blue” Lou Marini, but so piss off Mrs. Murphy (Aretha Franklin) in the process, that she gets testy enough to belt out “Think.” Even though that song-and-dance routine was filmed on set, it and other scenes in the film were good evocations of Maxwell Street, a once-vital, now mostly gentrified neighborhood famous for its open air market, live performances by local blues artists, and Polish sausage sandwiches.

Dancing Zorba’s and wedding dinner, My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)
Nia Vardalos’ Grecian family comedy was, in many parts, a tragic reminder of how easy it is for Hollywood to use stand-in cities for Chi-town. The incredibly profitable indie flick made the most of its small budget by filming in Toronto’s Danforth neighborhood, one of the largest Greek neighborhoods in North America, and featured exterior shots of venues from that city, like Pappas Grill. The main restaurant, Dancing Zorba’s, was shot at Simcoe and Pearl streets in Toronto. It was a massive missed opportunity to showcase Chicago’s own Grecian heritage, including the supposed introduction of flaming saganaki by the Liakouras brothers, Chris and Bill, at the Parthenon restaurant. With all the jokes about Greek cuisine, flaming cheese seems too good to pass up.

Baseball bat banquet, The Untouchables (1987)
De Niro whacks a disloyal associate with a bat during a climactic banquet scene shot at the Crystal Ballroom at 636 S. Michigan Ave. The scene was based on an actual mob assassination attempt; henchmen and thugs Albert Anselmi and John Scalise plotted a Chicago outfit coup, but Capone got wind and beat them both to death during dinner on May 7, 1929.

Sunday dinner, Soul Food (1997)
A tribute to the bonding power of a family meal, complete with a child narrator as sweet as his grandmother’s sweet potatoes, this film is filled with scenes where the camera lovingly pans over tables overflowing with traditional Southern fare.

Autolux: Guitarist Greg Edwards Expands His Sonic Vocabulary

Story
EQ Magazine
September 2010
Link

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L.A. trio Autolux strikes a rich vein of guitar and bass tones, recalls the dark, prickly melodies of Blonde Redhead and Sonic Youth, and roughs everything up with drummer Carla Azar’s heavyweight hammering. It’s a balance of high and low fidelity, according to guitarist Greg Edwards, which he constantly tweaks while playing and recording.

“It’s easy to get texture and emotion from a lo-fi approach, and it’s easy to get dynamic, sterile sound with good technique that has no lasting impact,” he says. “We’re always trying to combine emotion and impact that’s not a mess, and fidelity that’s not just soulless and academic.”

Transit Transit incorporated lessons learned during previous sessions with producer T-Bone Burnett that comprised 2004’s Future Perfect. Burnett’s engineer labored over mic placement, and when Edwards set out to record the new album himself, he followed suit. Recording in a practice space with below-average acoustics, something that precluded using a room mic, forced the matter.

While recording himself, Edwards avoided excess compression and extraneous pedals. He alternated fluidly between Gibson ES-345 Hollow Body, Gibson SG, and Jazzmaster guitars, playing through a VHT cabinet with a Pitbull head into a pair of positioned mics. A Neumann U57 provided punch and articulation while a Royer R-121, a “very EQable, pleasant sounding mic,” brought out the mid-range and high frequencies, important on songs like “Supertoys,” where the bass and guitar constantly shared frequencies.

“The midrange is a mysterious area for me psychologically,” says Edwards. “I want to hear more than I should, so I undershoot with midrange. I follow the old wisdom about taking away frequencies to reveal what you want to hear and turning down the high and low ends.”

Tracking to an Alesis ADAT HD24 hard drive captured multiple versions of the same line, and provided more options for mixing. Many of the bent, distorted tones come from running two amps simultaneously to create tension. The fundamental sound from the amp, layered or not, is always the starting point.

“With guitar mics you can get a wide range of differences in tone just by changing the angle, pointing into the cone, or changing the mics’ positions in regards to one another,” he says. “I get the amp sounding exactly like I want, and then it’s up to me to put the mics into the right position, do some subtle EQing with the pres, and really capture what’s coming out.”

The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s

Feature
Pitchfork
August 30, 2010
Link

Here are my contributions to Pitchfork’s rundown of the best tracks of the ’90s.

176
176. Orbital
“Chime”
[FFRR; 1990]
Simon Reynolds called this early rave anthem “The British ‘Strings of Life’,” and the grounds for comparison between Orbital’s buoyant first single and the Derrick May Detroit techno classic extend beyond the keyboard riff and pulsing beats. “Chime” shares the low-tech, handmade feel of “Strings”, and its origins are equally humble. Rushing to finish a track before hitting up the pubs in Sevenoaks, England, in summer 1989, Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll sorted through his dad’s easy-listening records, nicked a few samples he still hasn’t cleared, and cobbled together a track– on his parents’ cassette player, no less. Released at the dawn of the 90s, it went top 20 in the UK and established Orbital as a dance music force. They still perform the track for raving throngs today, heads and headlights bobbing. –Patrick Sisson

54. Portishead
“Glory Box”
[Go! Beat/FFRR; 1994]

Despite their arsenal of artful samples and expectation-shredding musical acumen, the greatest weapon of Portishead producers Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley has always been the voice of Beth Gibbons. Her every inflection hints at an anguished backstory that she never quite reveals. “Glory Box” tastefully lays down a loop of sleek strings from Isaac Hayes’ “Ike’s Rap II” and accents it with taut snares, vinyl crackle, and Utley’s moaning guitar. But the song still belongs to Gibbons, whose alternately lacerating and shivering delivery throws down the gauntlet. “Give me a reason to love you/ Give me a reason to be a woman.” She’s begging for an answer, and sings with a deep understanding of how futile it may be to pose the question. Trip-hop often delved into darker, weirder recesses, but this one hit a fragile emotional note. –Patrick Sisson

52. The Stone Roses
“I Wanna Be Adored”
[Silvertone; 1991]
The Stones Roses’ debut has been acclaimed and canonized so much that it’s now recognized to be just as good as the album the cocky Mancunians felt they were making in the studio. The band was famously self-confident, but when you’re celebrated for something as elemental as “I Wanna Be Adored”– finally a hit single in 1991, two years after it was first released– sticking out your chest seems only human. Every simple, uncomplicated piece of the song contributes layers of meaning; John Squire’s unspooling guitar, Mani’s thick bass, Reni’s timekeeping thud and most famously, Ian Brown’s airy vocals. The lyrics can appear self-absorbed, the object in this construction merely a tool to worship or redeem. But with a scant 19 words, “I Wanna to Be Adored” suggests multitudes– a desire for love, sabotage through self-hatred, or fame’s glowing hope and poisonous pessimism. For all the hype, it was about fundamentals. –Patrick Sisson

School Of Seven Bells on Ethereal Vocal Layering

Article
EQ Magazine
September 2010
Link

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The Cocteau Twin-esque dream pop of School of Seven Bells contains a particular mix of weighty and weightless vocals from identical twin singers Claudia and Alejandra Deheza. Their shimmering melodies and intricate harmonies may conjure up visions of endless effects pedals, but the band relies on precise layering and a vocals-first approach.

“There’s so much going on with a voice that’s not happening with a guitar,” says Benjamin Curtis, the band’s guitarist and producer. “It’s the most unique organic sound that you can manipulate.”

While recording their sophomore disc Disconnect From Desire [Vagrant/Ghostly International] at their home studio in New York City, Curtis set up a Neumann U 87 with a high-pass filter and hung it upside-down. Overdubbing and rarely singing simultaneously, the singers have similar voices but different styles. Alejandra comes on stronger and dives into extended explorations of scales, singing about a foot off the mic. And Claudia, who weaves in intricate harmonies, is more premeditated and sings right next to the mic, often barely above a whisper. The contrast is clear on “The Wait.” Alejandra glides through strong harmonies during subdued verses, while Claudia’s pinpoint flourishes energize the chorus.

Curtis runs tracking vocals through a Universal Audio SOLO/610 pre directly to Logic, without compression. “I replaced the stock tubes in the UA 610 with older tubes, which opened up the sound,” he says. “We tried the Empirical Labs Mike-E, which we use live, but it wasn’t sounding right. We thought recording with compression was going to enhance the sound, but they don’t need it. We compress the hell out of everything in the mix, but I hated making that decision early on.”

Occasional vocal effects crop up, such as the delay and reverb that gave “Joviann” extra bite, or the chorus of “Babelonia,” sung a step up then pitched down for more personality. But Curtis and mixing engineer Jack Joseph Puig focused on blending and placing vocal tracks (up to 20 a song) in the fore.

“I like printing the vocals in mono to make sure the frequencies are fighting,” says Curtis. “Putting vocals last is a problem. It’s the same frequency range as guitars. Get the vocals down and know where they’re going to live and don’t be married to the guitar. It’s a beautiful thing when frequencies are rubbing. Your brain always picks out the center note and the weird interactions in the speaker. It’s beautiful.”

Machine Love: Matmos

Feature
August 13, 2010
Resident Advisor
Link
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RA talks to Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt about micing cacti, counting with “the Bjork” and the philosophical dilemmas of live performance.

While Matmos is often described in terms of conceptual frameworks and inspired sampling—bowing a rat cage or recording liposuction are but two of the most famous examples—the experimental duo’s dialogue of ideas, and the playfulness with which they perform live, is what has kept them relevant. Drew Daniel and Martin Schmidt are never content to stand still. Watching them behind their bank of instruments, which sometimes includes an Indian drum machine, a metal sheet, a spring reverb called The Moisturizer, a cactus and more, only reinforces the conversational aspect of their music.

Known for their unpredictable shows, we caught up with the duo for the latest edition in RA’s Machine Love series to talk specifically about their live set-up. It was the afternoon before their performance at this year’s Mutek festival, a set which mixed tracks from their 2008 synth odyssey Supreme Balloon and from Treasure State, their recent collaboration with minimalist New York ensemble So Percussion.

What pieces are you performing tonight?

Drew Daniel: It’s half and half. We’re going to play two pieces from Supreme Balloon and two pieces from the new album we’ve just created with So Percussion that we’re about to tour. But since So Percussion is busy in New York, we’ve had to create standalone electronic versions of them. I guess when we play live it’s always 50/50 between structured loops and rhythms and free improvisation and that often means I’m more…

Martin Schmidt: To be honest, what we’re doing tonight, there’s not a hell of a lot of free improv.

DD: What I was going to say is that’s it’s improvisation in that there are a lot of open choices about when you bring things in and how long you stay in them and what you’re doing on top of a structure. The structure isn’t cut out in advance. I don’t have a cut sequence that’s 200 bars and it starts and it ends. What I have is a lot of options I go through. What’s clear is that the song may have seven sections, but how long each section is and how busy it is and what we’re doing on top of those sections is freely determined in the moment. I’m calling that improvisation, but it’s not, of course.

It’s not totally free, there’s just a set of options.

MS: Yeah, it’s not free improv but it’s improvisatory. I am incapable of counting. I mean, I can count, I really can. But musically I can’t do it. It’s sort of a structure based on necessity really. Oh yeah, I should do this now… for a while. This caused trouble with the Bjork. During her songs, you’re supposed to be counting. And I kind of couldn’t do it. There was some trouble and she was patient… to a point.

DD: We try to use our videos as graphic scores to drive our awareness of where we want to be in a piece. If we have a seven minute video, and the squiggly black circles are turning into red misty clouds, that means I need to bring in the Coupigny [a modular synthesizer used on Supreme Balloon] sounds and thin out the drum machine more and more.
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