If you see our stage setup, we have what we call the loop amp. John, the drummer is in
the middle in front of that. Dave and I are pumping a loop into the amp on the back center
of the stage and so it’s just an audio signal that we hear. Sometimes people ask if we use
a click but we don’t. It’s just music.
Looping is the backbone of this band for sure. Especially as the drummer, I can’t even
imagine not playing to a loop anymore. It allows me to be more melodic, maybe it allows
me to just relax, and it’s freeing for me as a musician.
Throughout the years and throughout each album it was about like what we can do to make looping
more interesting. There is no deep philosophical meaning, it’s just like repetition is something
that’s really interesting to us.
We always sort of had this idea of keeping the Yin and Yang of the sonic spectrum in
our mix, so we do have computerness and also pedalland.
Dave sort of has a process of capturing
something on a pedal and then rephotographing it with another pedal. And you know, having
some pedals in the middle to sort of affect the chain as he’s recapturing it.
I mean essentially I’m doing that kind of stuff too, in a digital spectrum. I really
like the idea of marrying tradition with the infinitely expansive forwardness that you
can get from computerland.
The thing about this band is sort of the ridiculous pairing of different kinds of people.
I’m interested in complicated things. Like, truth is revealed through like a sort of mystical
machine of chaos. John, like I think grew up in a hardcore music background. His drumming
is very stripped down. And sometimes John and I seem to align in that we both like something
that hits you over the head.
Dave often has this kind of perspective that that can be obnoxious. He’s like a designer
by training with a minimal aesthetics. So there’s this conflict of like too much coming
from me and then stripping everything down coming from them I think. They’re actually
pretty opposite directions and it’s funny like finding this middle ground.
Starting a band is like “Yeah you got a good guitar sound - Oh wait a minute I live
with you now.” You end up like eating more meals with that person over the course of
a year than sometimes like your own girlfriend or wife, I don’t know, and you’re like,
“How did that happen?” And you really are married to these people.
The basic process of recording a record for us is people individually coming up with stuff.
Everyone will work by themselves and come up with these tiny seed ideas, send them to
each other and then we kind of just take it from there. The three of us really only get
into the same room together, when we’re all really reacting to a specific idea that
seems to be working.
If we compare loops or something and send each other ideas and there’s no beat, its
totally subjective. Its like looking through a glass house and not knowing which way the
doorway is.
Ian would write stuff and he’ll give it to us, and I’ll spend all this time living
with it and doing all this stuff, and then, and play it for him, and he’ll just be like
“What? That’s nothing, that’s not even close, to what I had in mind.”
Sometimes John can be like, the ‘1’ is like here, but Ian and I could be like no
that’s the ‘3’ you know.
Sometimes people get bummed out by that, and sometimes it’s a beautiful accident that
turns into this amazing monster that everybody loves. So that process is very, very, very
important to us, and I think that you wouldn’t be able to achieve that if you were constantly
together.
This band started in New York, we all live in New York, we practice in New York. The
problem with recording an album in New York is that everything in New York is expensive,
including recording studios. Would I rather pay for like a pimped out prime studio where
Whitney Houston recorded on 57th Street, or come four hours away and be able to sit in
a room for three weeks, and make sure everything is exactly the way I want it? I would rather do that.
This is our third trip in this studio - the Machines with Magnets. If we were in New York
and we were working on an album we would never get shit done. But really the the main reason
why we work and record our albums at Machines with Magnets it is because of the people
and the studio itself.
Technically we have two full length records and two EPs. This will be our third full length record.
When we recorded ‘Gloss Drop’ we spent seven months sleeping and living
in this studio. It became this ridiculous out of control project. This time we’ve
tried to do a lot of stuff beforehand, and come in here a little bit more prepared and
have like ideas to work together.
We had all been working on our own really. Endlessly generating new ideas and a lot of
the ideas that I generate tend to have multiple versions. You know I’ll hand 28 loops or
something over to Seth, in the studio and I’ll be like, he’ll listen to them, and
by the second one, he’ll be like “That’s cool, throw it in.” And I’d be like “ But
dude, 15, 17, and 19 were really heavy you’ve gotta check that out”. He doesn’t, I realised
like, the deeper the esoteric path you go down, really you are the only human being
who is going to have the patience to actually care enough to make sure the best one comes out.
Just seeing them for the past three years get ready to come in and record they were
able to really focus once they got here, and once they were forced to focus. In New York
they were never forced to settle on an idea, and they just had as many options as possible
and now they’re kind of being forced to limit those options and make some decisions.
Dave and Ian start to hyper-focus on things when John’s not around. John kind of similarly
to the way he plays drums, is just like, “Alright, let’s get this done.” So when John’s
around they kind of get a little nervous and feel like they have to do something really,
really well, really quickly.
Because Battles has a lot of electronic based components to their music, the challenge for
us is to merge the organic world, with the digital world. So using an actual acoustic
space is important. We’re set up so that we can record live, but also if there
are prerecorded parts we can also send them from the studio through these amps and then
recapture any direct sounds that they might have recorded on their own. So that we can
get the sound of the amps as well as the sound of the ambient room as well.
We have a bed set up in our ‘B’ room. Whoever is in that room is like quite literally
living with their music because they’re just waking up, sitting down with the computer
working all day, getting back in bed.
On the other side of this wall is like a music venue, so it'll be like DIY rock shows. and
I’m like walking through in my underwear and like carrying a toothbrush “Excuse me.”
Its really weird.
Its the whole log cabin in the middle of woods studio routine. Pawtucket Rhode Island, there’s
nothing to do there and it’s this compound where you stay there and it’s super, super
intense but it’s also, you just get a lot more done. It’s always worth it.
Good morning. Hi! Come on in. Routines,
making coffee, you got to wet that filter first.
You know if there is one thing that ties us all together, you know it’s music and coffee
really, and the ability to laugh, and have fun. Don’t you think? Every morning I’m
just here, making coffee, laughing, getting ready to write some music and I, and it’s
just special. It’s just special.
You know when you think about it, it’s like every country has coffee, every country has music.
When you’ve played a guitar fret board or a piano keyboard for years and years you develop
habits and muscle memory, you start to repeat yourself. Through technology you can find
yourself in a new place again, and as long as you are playing the role of just like listening
to the results, and you’re sort of open minded to what is happening, it just sort
of feels like an infinitely creative thing.
You can play guitar sounds, in a way that you could never play on a guitar on a keyboard
on or on a Push. It keeps it kind of strange, and I think that’s the key.
For some reason I like making my guitar sound like a keyboard or a synthesiser, as much as I can, and I
like to make my keyboard sound like guitar, sometimes.
I’m using like the 16th note repeat on the Push. There’s a bass sound and a guitar
sound. They’re sort of blended together. You have to like anchor the melody enough
that you’re still repeating that melodic phrase enough that it’s like the song, as
opposed to just like a solo.
But you know, that’s sort of, a musician’s responsibility to know the difference.
To know how far you go.
Its a very dangerous world.
It’s good to be playing and be in the moment and let other people listen and be like “That
was a good take, you’re good, you’re good.” Otherwise I would spend like five days on
one part. It doesn't get any better as you get five days into it. Its not like,
I finally nailed it!
I have this feeling that like mistakes now sound like the bigger deal because you’re
so used to everyone having a computer to fix things. I mean I guess there are all kinds
of mistakes. There’s just simple ordinary reality right, and you kind of do something
which is is ok, and I think that was ok, but who like wants to listen to record that’s ok?
Maybe we are a bit of perfectionists. Possibly. I think that we tend to think things out in
a major, major way. When’s a song done? When does it need more?
Like what does it need more of?
These are questions why it takes us so long to make a record.
We get pretty heated throughout the process of like making an album, but I mean, I wouldn’t
expect any less, I mean It’s intense and everybody cares and everyone is fighting for
what they think it should be and I think that’s a great thing.
There’s a lot of like pushing and pulling and really opinionated things going on in
this band, which I think is really good it takes twice as long and it’s kind of a bummer
sometimes but I feel like if that tension didn’t exists within this band we would
not have been around for over 10 years. I mean there’s a reason for that, and it’s
because we love doing what we do, and we love this band, and I will go completely out of
my way to keep this thing happening, and I want to continue to do records, and I know
both these guys do as well, so its, we really really care a lot, it’s our life, so I think
that’s worth fighting for.
This band is fun for me because I always have something
to look forward to, either the writing of the record, the recording of the record, and
then going out and playing it every night in different places to as many people as we
possibly can. I mean we are in the process right now of planning out the next two years
of my life, it’s this never ending journey. As corny as that sounds,
its just really, really fun.