Interviews
By Larry Crane, Chris Eckman
Phill Brown has had a 30 year long career as an engineer, something most of us are barely even capable of imagining. And not only has he been working for a long while, he's worked with some of the greatest artists in the world. The Rolling Stones, The Small Faces, Traffic, Bob Marley, Brian Eno,...
Interviews
The Descendents, and subsequently ALL, are the manifestation of what I like about punk rock and music in general: ...
Interviews
Fugazi is probably one of the best rock bands on the planet at this point in time. Really. Their new album, End Hits is one of...
Interviews
Howe Gelb has spent the last 18 or so years fueling the Tucson, Arizona band Giant Sand,...
Interviews
J. Christian Quick is the proprietor and engineer at Stillness Sound Facility, located on...
Throughout her career, Ani Difranco has put out albums at an amazing rate, averaging about one release every nine months. Her fourteen albums have all been self-produced, and released on her own Righteous Babe Records. Despite working at such a clip, her production style has been anything but predictable. Since her first release in 1990, her sonic palette has expanded from a solo guitar and vocal sound to one incorporating drum kit, bass, accordion, and banjo, having also stopped off at various points with horn sections and sampled drum loops. All this studio work is squeezed into an aggressive touring schedule. I met up with Ani and Andrew Gilchrist, her partner in life and production, at the Congress House Studio in Austin, TX. There, they were mixing Ani's second collaboration with storyteller and union troubadour Utah Phillips. For many hours they waxed poetic about ADAT's, instant studio gratification, and the eternal struggle to get a decent acoustic guitar tone on tape.
The Unseen is a three-piece band that has split its time between my hometown of Eureka, CA, and Portland, OR. Their sound is largely influenced by sixties pop, notably Beatles, Beach Boys, and Booker T. and the MGs. There's also a huge Elvis Costello component to their sound, as well as a little Van Morrison. A few years back in Rolling Stone, the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl described them as "a cover band of 17-year-old kids who dressed like the Jam and could play any song you asked for." Well, the members of The Unseen are no longer 17, and they never were strictly a cover band. But provided they've heard it, and they've heard lots, they can play any song you ask for. The Unseen has just released their second album Worldview, which shows that they have undergone considerable growth since their first release Thinking of Thoughts. Worldview makes a solid case for the benefit of recording an album in your own home rather than being a slave to the clock and the budget in a "professional" studio. This of course is provided that someone in the band has the engineering skills, ears, and talent to pull it off. Here's what Unseen singer / main songwriter / guitarist had to say about the making of Worldview, recording school versus learning on your own, and a few other things.
On a farm somewhere in Richmond, Virginia, next to the house in an adjacent annex, Mark Linkous (aka Sparklehorse) is wiring up his 16 track studio. He has released two records on Capitol, vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot in 1985, and the long anticipated Good Morning Spider in February of 1999. Most tracks on the first record were recorded at Sound of Music (David Lowery's studio) and others were done by Mark at Static King, his home studio. The recordings are very inspired, utilizing unconventional vocal sounds, manipulated drums, and sound samples while maintaining a cohesive feel that contains a mix of creative pop and more sparse, beautiful slower songs. On Good Morning Spider, Mark decided to record it all himself and invested a couple of Tascam D88's, among other gear. I called him while he was still setting up his studio at a recently inhabited farm. We talked for about an hour and when I was transcribing the interview, I realized that his demeanor was very important to what he had to say and how it should be interpreted. So please, if you will, insert a soft spoken, very humble voice with a sweet southern drawl to get a bit closer to what actually transpired.
