I heard your first roommate when you moved to L.A. was Flea?
Yeah, exactly. When I came first to New York in 2006 I was 20, and I played in a band there. We did a lot of touring for about two years, and the intention was probably to either stay there after this band broke up or go back to Australia. We had toured with Perry Farrell's band, Satellite Party. I was coming through L.A., meeting some friends that I had made on tour, and I ended up playing with Perry Farrell at a charity event that Tom Morello [Rage Against the Machine] put on at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. He invited all of his friends to sit in. Flea was one of them, and we ended up meeting that night and jammed on two songs. One was a Parliament song! We kept in touch after that, and he asked if I wanted to play drums on a solo record [Helen Burns] that he was making. So, my first place in L.A. was in Flea's guest room in Malibu, which was an insane opportunity and such a generous gesture from someone that didn't really know me that well. But we connect with people easily and rapidly when we have a musical connection with them. That was my first connection to L.A. and the L.A. music scene. Over the course of living with Flea, we talked about a lot of music and somehow Warpaint came up. I remember him saying, "I think you'd like this band." I saw them play at Spaceland in Silver Lake [neighborhood of Los Angeles] and, through a number of magical connections, we ended up playing together.
I thought you'd been in the band since the beginning.
I think they had five drummers before I joined, including the original drummer, who was [bassist] Jenny [Lee Lindberg]'s sister. They made their first EP, Exquisite Corpse, with a combination of those drummers that they were touring with. The first LP [The Fool] was the band as we know it now, me included, which we did with Tom Biller who'd worked a lot with Jon Brion [Tape Op #18].
You've ended up doing quite a bit of studio work as a session drummer.
I did a lot of that before Warpaint as well, so it felt pretty natural to continue that job.
What is your strength as a drummer? Why do people hire you over the many other drummers out there?
I think that I really love that job. I enjoy collaborating with people. I don't know if I have a dominant identity on the drums; I don't feel like I have one. I don't come into sessions thinking, "I'm going to do my thing," if that makes sense. I'm going to play the way that I always play on Cate Le Bon’s records, on Kurt Vile’s records, or on Courtney's Barnett's records. I don't bring the same ideas. I like to be as much of a chameleon as possible and try and read what the artist wants and needs. What's the dream scenario? Not mind reading, necessarily, but being a good sport and collaborator in the studio. I'm sure there are lots of other drummers that do exactly the same thing, but for some stroke of luck I get hired.
But you also get rehired, too. You have a consistent group of people that you continue to work with. I always think of you, and Cate, and Samur as a younger “Wrecking Crew” from L.A. that comes and visits me every few years. [laughter]
Yeah, we did that Tim Presley record [The Wink] together. It's so fun to make music with people that I love and become close friends with. It's the development of that rapid, intimate relationship that you can have with people when you play music with them. You can spend ten years drinking at bars with people, or you can play music with them.
What do you do to prep for someone new that you haven't worked with?
Not a lot, to be honest. I don't study people's previous music too much. Sometimes I'll happen to be a fan, and I've experienced their music whether I've been a fan or it's something that's in the ether. I'll understand what their style is. But every artist reinvents themselves in some micro degree with every new album or song that they make. It's always going to be something different. To come in and be extra-prepared clouds my judgement. I prefer coming in and reading what an artist is feeling that day and what their ideas are for this one specific song, without coming in with a predetermined idea. I think there's a real pleasure to creating something from scratch with people. That's something that keeps people interested in their own music, and other people's music, with those small evolutions that they make, from song to song or from album to album.
What's your mental state in the studio when you meet a new artist, producer, or engineer?
It's usually a lot of talking, gossiping, hanging out, and taking the temperature. Usually people, whether they're mindful of it or not, are deciding in the moment whether they made the right decision to hire this one person or whether the chemistry is correct in the room, and there are other players involved lots of the time. There are so many things happening in that moment. It's like when you meet someone for the first time, they tell you their name and you shake hands; but all of that goes out the window in this one moment because you're so flooded with information. "What's the color of their eyes? How do they smell? How are they walking around the room?" There's a parallel to that in music-making as well. I'm sitting down and start playing with people that I've never played with before; a bass player who's got a totally unique groove and a guitar player that's maybe pushing a little bit in a nice way, and then I'm hearing all these directives from the producer or the artist in the control room. It's a lot of information to take in, even if a lot of it is subconscious. I think the best state to be in is a relaxed state. When I first start recording, I get a bit of red-light fever. We're jamming through the song, figuring it out. And then once we start tracking, all of a sudden my muscles tense up. I call it “hot veins.” I get it a lot when we're doing performances on television where it's live and the stakes are pretty high. I don't want to screw up because I don't want to have to do another take and slow everyone down. That used to happen a lot, but now it's about being as relaxed as possible. A lot of the chatting and what we think of as superfluous studio time contributes to that relaxed state, because then I'll feel comfortable hanging out with these people and it usually leads to good music, or at least a good performance. I can have a proclivity for overthinking. I can definitely trip myself out, but because I've played music more than most other activities that I've done in my life, I've figured out what works best for me and what doesn't necessarily serve me or the situation.
Let's move to the technical side a little. The first time I recorded an experienced drummer – Michael Urbano – getting a good drum sound was suddenly easy. He'll listen to what we've recorded, tunes his performance to accommodate the recording, and I don't have to do a lot of EQ or switch mics. What are your tips for what a drummer can do to make the recording better? Or how can a producer help the drummer be the person who makes recording drums easy?
That's a good question. I don't know if I can universally answer it, but I can definitely answer it within my experience. That's something I learnt almost exclusively from recording, versus live performance or practicing drums. I first experienced this 15 or 16 years ago with Noah [Georgeson] and Samur when they were engineering and producing Adam Green. He made a movie called Adam Green's Aladdin, and I played drums on the soundtrack that he composed. I remember the value, within that style of music, of playing soft and hearing myself well. Maybe it's taking headphones off, but obviously I can't do that if I have to listen to a click. Having as clear of a picture of the sound that's being recorded is not only important, it's also enjoyable. It's fun to hear how different my drums and playing can sound when the overhead mics are super low. Or, if the sound is extremely roomy I'll play differently based on how those are set up. Sometimes, it's a case of the sonic identity of an album already being established before I walk into the room. With Adam Green, it was very much Serge Gainsbourg-y, close mic'd dry drums. It wasn't, “Let's hear how Stella plays, and we'll set up around her.” It's nice to get into the universe that is established sonically and then play with that. Whether it's someone sending me an echo or reverb on the snare, or giving me a lot more room mics, or a lot less, I'll play differently based on that sonic personality. That's not a burden; it's fun. Like gaining up a preamp and feeling that when I'm tracking that I can play super light, but it's also resonant and so beautiful. Or knowing that we're doing a full Dave Grohl meets Steve Albini [Tape Op #10, #87] thing with huge room mics and playing according to that. Maybe that feels a bit too general, but that's my tip. That can be a fruitful, fun part of recording. It's not overthinking. It's, "What does it sound like right now? If I play a little bit quieter or a little bit louder, where's the sweet spot in this? And how is it interacting with any other instrumentation that's there?" That's the thing I learnt most from recording with great engineers, like Noah, Samur, and Rob Schnapf [#9] with Kurt Vile.
Your headphone mix is pretty crucial?
Totally. I've started experimenting with using my in-ears in the studio, which I never have before. I don't think it makes a huge difference, but it's a psychological thing for me. I know there are more drivers hitting my eardrums; there's more clarity and more of a larger scope, sonically, that I'm hearing. But honestly, 99 percent of what I've recorded has been with Audio-Technica headphones. I don't get too finicky with it, but I definitely like to hear roughly what's happening with the drum mix so I can play it into it.
Have you picked a favorite signal path, in terms of mics and preamps?
When I'm recording myself, which I do more often than not, obviously I have a lot more choices with that. I like a transformer-based sound: the Yamaha mixer that I have, with the direct outs, and the BAE and UTA [Undertone Audio] gear. I like to have a choice between transformer-based sound and a cleaner tone. I enjoy the way my ear responds to, and how my playing responds to, a more – for lack of a better word – blown out sound. Then I can play really quiet, and that's the sweet spot for me.
Are there any mics in particular that you gravitate towards?
The AEA or RCA 44; the large ribbon mics. I love Coles 4038s. The best drum sound I've ever had, I think, is a mono Coles with a kick mic, plus maybe room and snare mics. I like four mic setups. I usually use the classic [Shure] SM57 on the snare, and lately the Alien8 mic on the kick drum. It’s a figure 8 dynamic mic made by a company in Australia called DrAlienSmith. I don't want a super lo-fi, crazy, grungy sound. I push certain elements, like pushing a ribbon within reason to make it come alive.
Do you do the Glyn Johns [Tape Op #109] mic setup?
Sometimes, yeah. I also like a variation on the ORTF [see sidebar] that I have with the Soyuz 013 SDCs.
Oh, right. I saw that upstairs.
I love that sound in certain spaces. I love close overhead sounds, but if I'm in the perfect room I'll definitely use as many ribbons as possible and maybe a nice LDC. I just got a Neumann U 87, which I love, but it doesn't work in every environment.
Years ago, almost every session used to start with the drums and a band playing together. That point's obviously long gone. I would assume you would still prefer to lay down a drum track with human beings playing together in a room?
One thousand percent, yeah.
But I also assume you often get hired to put down drums after the fact, where all the other instruments are already tracked. How do you deal with that?
That's a good question as well. I haven't thought about that shift so much because when I first started recording professionally, we were already in that hybrid phase. A lot of people were making pretty fleshed out demos in their bedrooms or home studios. A lot of people start with drum machines, build the song, and either keep in some elements of the drum machine or have someone replace the drum machine parts with a live drummer. Over half of the time, I'm the last piece of the puzzle, the live drum performance, which I don't mind at all. It's a totally different part of my brain because I'm interpreting, not necessarily creating. It's enjoyable both ways. But with some styles of music, like playing with Kurt Vile, we feed off each other and we establish an idea that then becomes a song. There's a song called “Girl Called Alex” on his Wakin on a Pretty Daze album. That was something that we came up with. I totally forgot about it. We were just jamming on acoustic guitar and drums, and then he went away and built a whole song out of it. I don't think we could have made that song, or he could have written that song, if it went the other direction. I'll make different decisions based on the rhythm. If I have any advice, it's just enjoying every variation of the process. Knowing that it's a different hat that you're wearing when playing and responding to players and creating an idea that will then get transformed into a piece of music. A song is an open, risky process. Trust that these few people in the room are going to add some value or come up with something that's compelling enough to write lyrics over. I guess it's safer to do that legwork yourself if you're a songwriter and you engineer your music. I like them both. I don't mind coming into a session and someone is saying, "I have the drum part mapped out from the first second to the last beat, and I want you to play exactly as I've programmed it in Ableton Live." Great, what a fun challenge. I like to program a drum machine in some inhuman way and try and replicate it on the drum kit. I'll come up with parts I wouldn't have imagined if I was just doing my usual combination of beats and rhythms that have been ingrained into my soul. I can mash the sequencer on an Elektron Octatrack or a Roland [TR-]808 and try and play that. It could be cool!
Do you find yourself consciously trying to push or pull the beat a little bit during sections of the song when you're recording to a mostly finished track?
Definitely, but within reason. Some people require me to be as on beat as possible, as the whole ecosystem of the song is already so established that if I start putting in a J Dilla vibe it's like, "Whoa. I feel sick." It's more about if I hear an idea when I'm in that process. It's important to give the artist or the producer what they hear in droves, so that they have lots of options. And then, if I think it could be interesting, "Do you mind if I do a pass with a couple of ideas that I have?" Maybe they'll use two or three fills out of that pass. I'm a working-class musician in that way. I like to give people what they paid for first, and then, if there's time, if they're open to it, I'll try something a little bit different.
How often do you have to do a single part, like just a hi-hat?
For electronic music, it has happened a lot. My good friend, Jono Ma, started this band Jagwar Ma a few years back. He had done a lot of the programming, but hi-hats and top-line percussion are generally the parts that can humanize a programmed, sequenced beat. With the XX, Jamie [xx, aka James Smith] will have programmed a lot of drum parts, and I'm putting in modular samples, as in samples of drums that can be moved around and offset to fit in with whatever's programmed. I also love doing that.
That's fun, especially in Ableton Live.
Exactly.
I've often thought drummers inherently make great producers, because they're having to build the foundation of a song. How did you end up making the transition from building the foundation to being the contractor for the entire house?
That's a good analogy! I never considered myself a producer. I was more of an engineer, initially, when I was making music as a teenager and recording music experimentally for my own enjoyment. But through the process of being in a band for 16 years and working with people as a session drummer, as well as a touring musician in so many different scenarios, I feel that's been the most valuable experience that I've transferred into the production role. Having to engineer occasional Warpaint sessions when we're writing demos or jamming, I knew how to run Pro Tools on a basic level when we were doing demos for one of our albums. A lot of that ended up on our second album [Warpaint]. I don't know how much of it is the drumming experience versus the mindset. It's listening and it’s the collaborative spirit, which most other good musicians would also inhabit. I also think that producers, engineers, and the technical crew of making an album are generally just there. Maybe there's a parallel between that and drummers that can be in the background. When you watch The Beatles: Get Back, Ringo [Starr] is always there. He shows up on time. He's always available. He's not the creative genius, but he's the working-class musician that's always there. Maybe there's an element of that with drummers, where we have to be reliable. Maybe that's a good parallel. I haven't thought about that. I'm used to sitting on my ass for hours at a time when people are figuring something out. Part of a producer's role is sitting back, being patient, and encouraging creativity but not forcing it. Being available when something great is occurring and rolling when something's getting figured out.
You have a lot of ongoing collaborations with so many people, like Cate or Samur. What keeps those working relationships continuing?
I could write an essay about all the things I love about working with Cate, but honestly the main thing I love is that I just can't believe that my friend is so endlessly talented. She's so generous as a producer, whether it's producing other people's music or making her own. She's clear with what she wants, and within that confidence there's also a flexibility with the people that she chooses to bring into her project. She will lean on Samur, and he gets to spread his creative wings so much with her projects and her records. I feel the same way with her; I don't feel boxed in. I feel that I'm there for a reason. We have good communication and a good friendship, but I also know that I'm there because she knows what I can bring to the recording and the music. Her confidence gives me confidence, and that's the best kind of collaborator. Someone that you feel comfortable with, confident with, and who's so rock solid. She's the steadiest, most creative person I've ever worked with.
You've done a few records with Kurt Vile, right? You mentioned the track where you guys were jamming, and then he took it home and built from it.
It's always a combination with him. When I was brought in to play drums on Wakin on a Pretty Daze, the first album we made together, he had a lot of the rhythms established to some extent. There was obviously room to breathe, but I was coming in late to the process and trying to add as many Australian magic sprinkles as possible to see it through to the finish line with him. But with the second record that I made with him, b'lieve I'm goin down – which had "Pretty Pimpin" on it, we made the bulk of it in Joshua Tree at Rancho [De La Luna, Tape Op #63]. Rob [Laakso], who was his bass player and sadly passed away, was also engineering and producing a lot of it. Farmer Dave [Scher] was playing keys. It was the four of us cooped up in the desert making music every single day without a lot of preconceived ideas. Kurt had chord progressions and piano parts, but in terms of the arrangements of the songs and how they ended up, there was so much freedom to respond to each other's playing. That was a much jammier record. I love that album so much. It depends on where I come into the process: Whether it's right at the beginning, and there's a creative need, and there's a lot of room for ideas from his collaborators and the musicians that he works with. Or whether he's been deep in demo land doing different versions of songs – then I'm coming in towards the end to put the finishing glaze on. It depends.
You've done a lot of recording in Joshua Tree, [California], right?
Yeah, I have; I've worked at Rancho quite a bit on lots of other people's projects. We did some of Courtney's new record there, but I also converted my 500 square foot garage there into a studio, which I worked out of and used for a couple of years while I was living out there. That was great. It was almost too much room, to be honest. You saw my space here, in Los Feliz. I don't mind cramming as much gear into a small space as possible. I felt like it was a huge studio and life upgrade to have that much space, and I loved it. Have you been to Joshua Tree?
I've been to Rancho once. Such a great space and Dave Catching, who runs it, is such a nice guy.
Someone, who's a big Desert Sessions fan, asked me the other day if it was the studio or the place. I love Rancho so much, and there is definitely a magic energy there, but it's also Joshua Tree in general. The reason why Rancho works there, and the reason why people love working there, is because Joshua Tree is conducive to creativity. A lot of creative people, when they go and visit Joshua Tree, will say, “Oh, there’s this ineffable thing here, it must be so nice to be out here making music." I can't think of another place where the vibrations are as slow as they are there, where you're not sweating the small stuff that gets in the way of creativity. Even listening to music is so different out there. Driving around on the big highways and the big roads, seeing creosote bushes and a huge sky, and listening to Warp records like LFO and Aphex Twin. It hits different than it does in downtown L.A. But yeah, I miss making music there, for sure. It's a special place.
You've worked with Annie Clark [St. Vincent, Tape Op #134] a few times as well?
I played drums on a few tracks. One was a soundtrack that she made for a film called The Nowhere Inn around 2019. Cate was co-producing with her on her latest record, All Born Screaming. I came into the studio and laid down some drums on that. Annie's also a great producer.
I love the Sleater-Kinney record [The Center Won't Hold], that she did.
It's really good. They did that at Boulevard [Recording, Tape Op #164] in Hollywood. She's got such a strong sense of style and a clear vision, much like Cate. They were both in the room when we were making that, and they love and respect each other so much. They work brilliantly together, and it's fun to watch their dynamic. In my memory, Cate had played or written the bass line to a song. I don't know if you've focused in on Cate's bass playing, but I call it Welsh funk. It's the strangest, most incredible bass style I've ever heard. It's all over her last record, Pompeii. I was responding to her Welsh funk bass line and playing something that ended up sounding like tracks that her and I had made previously. It was such a beautiful experience, and that album turned out great.
You've done a couple records with Regina Spektor, as well.
It was with Leo Abrahams [Tape Op #111], who was producing a Regina record [Remember Us to Life] at The Village. I had introduced him to Samur because he was looking for an engineer in L.A. I think we did two or three songs for that record.
Recently, you've been working with Courtney Barnett quite a bit. Didn't you produce her last record?
Yeah, Things Take Time, Take Time. We're working together on her current record with a few other co-producers as well. Marta Salogni [Tape Op #153] did some sessions in the desert. Courtney is co-producing as well, and John Congleton has been doing the more recent L.A. sessions. It's been a few sessions here and there over the course of a year. John is also mixing the whole record. We're going straight from overdubs and adding a few songs to the pile last minute, and then he goes straight into mixing.
You've also been doing a lot of remixes. On one of Cate's sessions, you had a whole workstation up in Panoramic's tower, and you were doing a remix project.
Yes. That was for Shura, a British artist.
You've also done remixes for Depeche Mode and Daughter [Tape Op #166], who we recently did piece on. How did you get into doing that?
I've always loved electronic music. I've always seen drumming and drum machines as simpatico. I've tried to use both in order to create harmony between those two elements. Nowadays, in pop music, programming is king. So many songs that we hear on the radio don't have live drums in them. That's just the fashion, and that was the case in the '80s and some of the '90s pop music as well. It's important for me to be a skilled programmer and creator the same way that it's important to come up with cool drum parts on a live drum kit, and to be able to record them in an interesting way. I grew up surrounded by my dad's [Marek Mozgawa] drum machines, sequencers, and keyboards. He sends me photos of me when I was three or four years old in his studio, and it looks exactly like my studio today. There are way too many cables. It's all over the place and chaotic. I look back at that now, and I think how much that would have made an influence on me. He also played the bass, my mom sang, and they had a drummer in their band, Burnt Offerings. They had a guitar player, but the keyboard player that they had was Peter Rundle. His family lived in Japan, and he would come back from Japan with all the newest Roland gear, like a JUPITER-8, Korg MS-20, and a TR-808. He would bring it over, and my dad would try all these sequencers out. I always saw it as the same thing. I never thought, "I've got my drumming brain and there's this whole other world of electronic music." There's so much you can transfer between the two. With sequencing, you have to understand the length of a pattern, how a 12-step pattern versus a 16-step pattern feels, and syncopation, plus how all of those swing. They're completely transferable. Every time someone asks me to do something like that, I do it with glee. I love spending time with my machines, and every time I do a remix I get so involved in it. It's definitely an overly dramatic process, because I'm not worried about people listening to it and liking it or not liking it. I put all of my creative energy into it, because in every other project that I work on I'm either a part of the puzzle, or I'm producing, or co-writing – collaborations between two or three people and we can lean on each other. But when I'm making a remix, it's just me in the room. I have source material, and that often dictates which direction I'm going to go in. But I'm composing this, to some degree. I'm making all these decisions by myself. I'm usually mixing it too. I can't turn around and look at someone and say, "How’s this sound?" I usually try to stay off the laptop as much as possible, because if I don’t then the options are nauseatingly endless! [laughter] I'm lucky to have these beautiful machines that have so much character. A few months ago, I made a remix for my friend, Jess Ribeiro, and I thought, "I just want it to be a [Roland] SH-101 and TR-606.” That allowed me to spend time playing with some of my favourite things, and getting paid a little bit of money to do it. What a gift! I love doing that, even though it takes up so much of my brain space. More than it should!
You're playing keyboard parts. Do you also play guitar?
Yeah, I do play a little bass and guitar.
You recently started doing soundtracks. That's very different, working for a company like Apple.
This particular project is an Apple TV show, The Buccaneers, and it's got three elements to the music. There's the score, which is done by this duo from England called AVAWAVES. Plus, there's the music licensing and music supervision side, And then there's my side, which is essentially more record-making or producing. It's a similar hat to the production hat, because it is producing original songs that are exclusive to the show. Oftentimes I'm bringing in friends of mine that I've worked with before to write some of the songs and perform, choosing combinations of musicians that I enjoy working with. It's a unique thing, because it's less about score and composing and more record production.
I've heard so many horror stories about dealing with soundtracks. You know, 25 revisions and then, "Let's use version number one."
It's very different from making a record. I haven't experienced that in this particular project that I'm working on, but I have experienced it in other projects where there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I was going to say, "For better or for worse," but I'm just going to say, "For worse." [laughter] There are a lot of people in that environment that are proving to themselves or their co-workers that they are legitimate parts of this operation. Justifying their place on the email chain, but not realizing that results in someone sweating it out in a studio. That definitely does happen. The first season of this show was an identity crisis, figuring out what exactly we're doing and spending a lot of time trying a few different things. But then once we got into a flow, understanding what everyone's job was, and what the personality of the show was, the music in that show was pretty easy. It was like making records with my friends, but with spotting sessions and a lot of Zoom calls in between. I'm lucky that the crew at Apple that I've interfaced with are trusting and generous with me. I never felt a sense of, "What the fuck am I doing? What have I got myself into?" I guess a lot of these experiences can feel soulless, because you're doing this thing that you love, but in an environment where there are a million puppet masters telling you to change the key or such. I haven't had a lot of that, which has been amazing.
You've done a little bit of recording with Samuel Shepherd from Floating Points, and you're about to DJ at Glastonbury with him.
Yeah! He's built a "Levan Horn"-style sound system called the Sunflower Sound System. I don't know how many speakers are in the set, but I know that he debuted it in a public square in Dalston in East London a few months ago. He's bringing a larger version of that setup to Glastonbury this year and has a lot of his audio friends helping to set it up. It's all his brainchild, and he's heavily involved in doing it. He's getting a bunch of his friends to DJ this sound system. I've got to think carefully about the music that will work. It's got to be the creme de la crème of audiophile music! 
