‘English Dream’, Spottiswoode & His Enemies’ sixth studio recording, is a haunting new departure for the New York septet. After winning two Independent Music Awards for 2012’s ‘Wild Goosechase Expedition’ – a poppy and satirical romp about a rock band’s doomed tour – the band returns with a beautiful and much more atmospheric set.

The journey begins with the airy “Till My Dying Day”, a love song set in London. ”Golden Apple”, a much spookier number , introduces one of the signature sounds of the record: Spottiswoode’s chiming reverb-drenched Fender Strat played in Nashville tuning. “Clear Your Mind”, a rare choral anthem for the band, merges The Byrds with Fleet Foxes.

In ’English Dream’, the album’s cinematic title track, the singer takes a train journey to visit an old friend in an English town where he is confronted with visions and memories from his past. Performed in an off-kilter 5/4 time signature, the track features the spooky trilling of Riley McMahon on mandolin. This is the third Enemies album that McMahon, the band’s lead guitarist, has also produced.

“No Time For Love”, the first single off the album, features the driving piano work of band keyboardist Tony Lauria. Sung as a duo harmony by Spottiswoode and trumpeter Kevin Cordt the song has a sixties retro vibe both in melody and sentiment plus a touch of boogaloo brass,

“Another Year” shows off the versatility of the band’s rhythm section. Tim Vaill on drums and John Young on bass address an almost Klezmer accordion melody with a driving neo-dub groove.

Two lush closing tracks feature the gorgeous blended horn work of Candace DeBartolo and Kevin Cordt on tenor sax and trumpet respectively: “Melancholy Boy”, one of Spottiswoode’s more vintage noir ballads; and “Sweetest Girl”, an upbeat and folksy love song that brings the record full circle.

http://www.spottiswoode.com

Harry Nilsson rode to the top of the charts in the early 1970s, thanks to an elastic voice, an enthusiastic endorsement from the Beatles, and a songwriting style that veered between baroque pop, psychedelic rock, and Tin Pan Alley standards. Nearly two decades after his death, the cult figure gets a 21st century reboot with Harry Nilsson Remembered, a tribute album produced by Kenny Siegal and performed by artists like Tracy Bonham, Rasputina, and Langhorne Slim. Totaling 28 songs, Harry Nilsson Remembered will be split into two volumes, with the first installment due out sometime this spring. We talked with producer Siegal, who runs Old Soul Studios and performs with the rootsy pop/rock band Johnny Society, about the project.

When did you first start listening to Harry Nilsson?

Twenty years ago. Brian Geltner, the drummer in my band Johnny Society, is a bit of a musicologist (among many other -ologists). Back when I was an impressionable young man, Brian sat me down and convinced me that a glass of seltzer water with ice in it was a delicious drink. Moments later, he played me a bunch of Harry Nilsson’s music, but this time he didn’t have to convince me of anything. Harry did the convincing. Next thing you know, it’s 20 years later and here I am in American Songwriter Magazine, winning the lotto.

Were you always a big fan?

From day one, I felt that Harry was a master of his craft. He was an undeniable talent. I am still blown away by Harry’s vocal range, committed vocal performances, the risks he took as a singer, and his ability to write great, original, timeless tunes. Doesn’t matter what year it is — greatness is always in style — and Harry Nilsson was great.

What are his strengths as a songwriter?

Harry had a knack for for writing catchy, well crafted, uniquely original tunes with memorable melodies, lyrical depth, and a vast emotional arc. His lyrical concepts and overall approach to being a singer/songwriter were singular to Harry Nilsson. Listening to Harry’s music, you could hear that he was just doing what comes natural to him, just being completely himself. He was a serious talent, and judging from his recordings, I think he fully realized his gifts through his work. That’s inspiring.

What did you think of the movie that came out a few years ago?

I appreciated it. It seemed like a down to earth, levelheaded take on Harry’s life and career as told by those who loved and respected him…. It’s great to see a film like that getting out there to shine a light on him. With this tribute record, you could say that we are coming from the opposite direction that the film did. I think the film was more about Harry’s life and Harry as a person. This tribute record is more about Harry’s work, as well as the work of all of the artists involved in the record.

What inspired the tribute idea?

I’ve always been inspired to sing a version of the song “Maybe.” It’s one of my favorites of his. So, recently, I did [record the song] and sent an early version of it to Annie Nilsson as an “offering” of sorts. It was like, “Annie, here’s how much I love your dad’s music …hope you enjoy it.” To my surprise, she responded favorably. Then I sent it to my favorite living singer on the planet: Robin Zander from Cheap Trick. Robin also responded favorably, and off-the-cuff he mentioned that he might be inspired to do one of his favorite Nilsson tunes as well. These two “nods” really lit a fire under the project for me. Then I thought, “I bet it’d be easy to put together a record of a bunch of young artists that I’ve worked with before, [with everyone] doing their favorite Harry Nilsson tunes.” I sent a note to about 25 artists that I have a good working relationship with, and to my amazement — within three hours — 20 artists, including Langhorne Slim, Rasputina, Railbird, Yellowbirds, Josh Kaufman and Sticklips (to name a few), had responded with “Count me in.”

So here we are, shining a light on Harry, yet again, only this time it’s a bit more in the abstract. ‘Abstract’ because none of us knew Harry, but we all love and feel close to his work. Collectively, we are breathing new life into the tunes he wrote. It’s a younger generation, different voices, different sounds, different production style, yet everyone is expressing themselves and being themselves fully (as did Harry). It feels like Harry’s spirit is right there with us. Whenever the artist shines on these recordings, Harry is also shining. There are many layers to it. It’s a beautiful thing.

What kind of work has gone into the project?

I own a recording studio in Catskill, NY, called Old Soul. When I began to move forward and start producing this thing for real, I allotted one day of studio time per tune, per artist. So we have all been getting together at Old Soul at noon, and by 10 p.m. we have a great new version of one Harry’s tunes, basically ready to be mixed. I have been sitting in the producer/ engineer seat, but have been inviting all the artists to co-produce their tracks with me to their heart’s content. Creatively speaking, it’s a very collaborative project. That’s where the fun is….

What’s been one of the highlights of working on it?

Because I am not only a fan of Harry’s but a fan of all the artists involved, to me each session has been a highlight. To name a few: Nina Violet and her invisible orchestra on “I’ll Never Leave You” blew me away, as did Willy Mason’s band and Brian Dewan’s Dewanatron (the Dual Primate Console) on “Think About Your Troubles”; Blueberry’s incredible vocal work and attention to detail on “Polli High”; Low Cut Connie’s blistering punk energy on “Jump Into The Fire.” Also, Brian Dewan’s freaked-out electronica version of “Coconut” was incredibly entertaining to work on, and I had the honor of recording Annie and Zak Nilsson doing a version of their dad’s tune “Gotta Get Up.” That was a real amazing moment. I traveled out to LA to work with them at my old friend Charlton Pettus’s studio in Sherman Oaks. They are very humble, down-to-earth folks and they don’t consider themselves professional musicians, but they have music and talent in their blood and I really enjoyed working with them. It was also a truly moving experience to be able to sit in the studio and play all of the artists’ renditions of their dad’s tunes for them in person. A lot of love went into this …all around… and I think they could feel it. To top it off, Annie’s going to be doing all of the artwork for the record. The whole thing just rules.

Did anyone surprise you in the studio?

Everyone did to some degree. I really appreciate being able to work with everyone and witnessing all of their different creative processes. Listening to Brian Dewan sing “Coconut” was a blast. It was sung in a character I’ve never heard from him before. Tracy Bonham’s vocal performances were killer. She just did one great take after another. Listening to Mamie Minch get deeper and deeper into the process of her bluesy/slide/dobro rendition of “Don’t Forget Me” was awesome. Marco Benevento was fantastic to work with. We broke some ground in the studio. Marco’s an incredibly talented keyboard player who has never sung on tape before. That is, [he never sung on tape] before we worked together on his version of “Are You Sleeping.” I was listening to him play the tune when the band was working out their arrangement in the studio, and he was sorta showing them the tune and singing along and I was like, “You mean you sing that good and you never sang on tape before???” I was honored that Marco chose to go for it and sing for this project, and to top it off, the guy’s got an impressive voice with like a 4-5 octave range. We layered a bunch of vocals, from the deep bass range to the mid-range to the high falsetto stuff, to create the sound we got on his rendition of “Are You Sleeping.” It’s an approach to recording vocals that I’ve used with singers such as the late Chris Whitley, Chris Rael, and Mike Farcas from The Wiyos in the past. Really, the idea is just to use all aspects of the voice you got… Why not? The voice is the best instrument (something Harry knew well).

Are the arrangements pretty faithful to the originals?

I recommended to everyone to use Harry’s original recordings as a map, but I insisted that we should not be chasing the original versions at all. I felt strongly that if we did a copycat of Harry’s recordings, then creatively we’d be falling flat on our faces. I felt that if we tried to compete with Harry’s versions we’d lose. I also felt strongly that all the artists should make the tunes their own and take some creative risks. I advised them all to do whatever it takes to find their way into the songs, so that they would be able to perform them from the inside… I believe it’s hard to do good work if you’re on the outside of something, and that you gotta be on the inside to do something worth listening to. A few hours into each session everyone was on the inside, and that’s what we got down on tape … That’s really what we got to show for this record….

What’s the key to creating a good tribute album?

In my opinion, the key is to focus on the best transcendent material that the artist created, as well as some off-the-beaten-path tunes, and to make sure that you’re not competing with the original work, more that you’re honoring and riffing off of it, while at the same time breathing new life into the material. I think while working on it, it’s good to treat it as if what you’re doing is the only version that will ever exist…This helps to to get everyone into the here and now. It requires some character acting, role playing, shape shifting, shape playing, and character shifting. The main challenge with doing a tribute to someone else’s work is that the material you are working on is not your original stuff, but if you can think of the task at hand in a wide open creative way, it’s really a great mental exercise that, at times, could be even more freeing than working on your own original work.

What would you like to work on next?

A children’s record of all original material with Johnny Society and, hopefully, a lot of the same artists who contributed to this tribute record. This project is all about Harry. For doing that much inspiring work in his life he deserves it … The next record will be for my daughter, Phoebe. She deserves it, too.

Read the original article here:

“Wild Goosechase Expedition,” their first album in three years, is nothing short of remarkable, and after a dozen or more spins is guaranteed a spot on my year-end list of favorite albums. It’s that good.

A perfectly executed concept album with an eclectic collection of songs to make the 71-minute running time zip by, the 17-track release incorporates elements of pop, psychedelia, rock, and blues. The highlights are too numerous to mention – you won’t find a bad song in the bunch – but Spottiswoode & His Enemies soar highest on “Happy or Not” “All in the Past,” “I’d Even Follow You to Philadelphia,” “All Gone Wrong” and the title track. Go find this record. Right now.

-JS

Beirut, the band born out of the bedroom of Santa Fe teenager Zach Condon in the early 2000s, has come a long way fast. The night after I spoke with Condon by phone from his hotel in Belgium, where he was situated for a European press junket, Beirut played a show with Arcade Fire in London’s Hyde Park. (“I didn’t know [it was happening] until an interviewer mentioned it this morning,” admitted Condon, who says he’s notorious for not paying attention to schedules.)

While 2007’s Gulag Orkestar put Beirut on the map with its charming lo-fi production, catchy songwriting, and obvious nod to Eastern European folk music, the group’s new album, The Rip Tide, is what Condon classifies as “the Beirut sound crystallized into its purest form.”

“I’ve always had a fascination [with Europe],” says Condon. “I never meant to be an ambassador for Balkan music or French music. At the core of my music, I was always writing very American pop music. I was just using all these different palettes to keep it interesting.” So instead of the eight multi-tracked trumpets that bay out at the start of Gulag, The Rip Tide’s brass is more like the clean, simple lines you’d hear in a Motown song.

Condon first started recording music after his brother left for college and bequeathed him a Fostex four-track. He bought some Oberheim organs, a BOSS DR-202 Dr. Groove sampler, and a desktop Mac with Pro Tools and a soundcard in the back that you plugged two RCA cables into. He started trying to cure his teenage insomnia by recording late at night.

On Gulag, Condon enlisted A Hawk And A Hacksaw (and former Neutral Milk Hotel) multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Barnes to play drums in the studio, and got fellow Elephant 6 acolyte Griffin Rodriguez to mix the album. It was the first time Condon had seen the inside of a studio.

“I remember I was obviously very nervous and very excited,” says Condon. “They were miking the drums and every time we did takes it felt wrong. I had to convince [the engineer] – and, trust me, it was difficult because I’d never been in a studio before and he obviously knew that – but I walked into the room and took two microphones and placed them five feet away from the drums at waist-height. And it sounded amazing. It sounded so raw and real. It’s something that we’ve done ever since.”

Condon and Rodriguez, who fronts Chicago-based Icy Demons and was a member of the free-jazz group Bablicon with Barnes, have been recording partners ever since, and continue to employ Condon’s drum miking technique.

After Condon finished writing the songs for The Rip Tide, he convened Rodriguez and the rest of Beirut for two weeks at Old Soul Studios, a recording studio in upstate New York. Condon would sit at the piano while the rest of the band gathered around him and they’d go through one song a day from one in the afternoon until five in the morning.

“I spent so many years multi-tracking. You get one person in [the studio] and you wait ‘til they get the right take and you move on. But when everyone is playing, you always get these subtle variations.”

“I started with purely electronic, then moved somewhere in the middle,” Condon says about the evolution of the Beirut sound. “Around Gulag, I split completely and did the entire thing [acoustically]. There’s a drum machine behind some songs but it’s very subtle. [On The Rip Tide] I’m trying very hard not to rely on electronics as the rhythm section. I want the rhythm section to be totally natural.”

There is one song, “Santa Fe,” with its warm electronic opening beat, where Condon’s original demo served as a foundation for the other parts.

“I was visiting my parents and they kept my old bedroom exactly as it was,” he says when asked about the song’s origin. “There were two organs, a Farfisa and this other brand, and then a piano on the other wall, and a few other instruments lying around. I was playing with those organs and I got that repeater melody going. The organ has a program where you can hold down the drum machine and the chords at the same time.”

But, true to the acoustic purist in him (then as now), Condon says if he could play just one instrument for the rest of his life, it’d be an upright piano. “What would keep me entertained the longest and has the most versatility? I would have to say piano. It defines music for me.”

Five Minutes with Jonathan Spottiswoode

Photo by Brian Dilg

Indie Sounds: So Piano 45 is your first solo outing in a decade? Why the wait? Why now?

Jon Spottiswoode: Yes, my first since Ugly Ugly Love. But that was much more “produced”. It had drums (by Tim Vaill, the Enemies drummer) on every track and all kinds of overdubs. Piano 45 is very stripped down and I’m virtually the only thing on it. Tony Lauria (the Enemies keyboard player) plays the piano on three of the tracks. Everything else is pretty much me.

I have wanted to do a stripped down CD for a long time. Friends have heard me play songs on guitar by myself and over the years many have encouraged me to make a simple record. Ironically, I finally decided to do it with a bunch of piano songs, and I barely even know how to play piano.

A couple of years ago, my friend Don Dilego (fabulous singer-songwriter) gave me an extra piano he had at his studio in Pennsylvania. I wrote a group of songs with it in a pretty short time and they seemed to fit together. They felt quite personal as well. Around this time I celebrated the ten-year anniversary of my band with a double CD release. It just felt like time to do a solo record. And then Kenny Siegal, the producer, kept calling me up trying to get me to make a record with him. So I did.

Why the wait? I’ve been busy! Leading the band, touring occasionally. We made four records. I made a duo record with Riley McMahon. And a record of my songs with Bronwen Exter. And that’s just music.

IS: For those who know Spottiswoode & His Enemies, what should they expect?

Jon: Well, they should expect not to like this record. There are no pyrotechnics, very little theatricality, it’s generally pretty downbeat, etc. If you like the quieter more intimate songs that the Enemies do, then maybe this CD will speak to you. Not surprisingly, I’m finding that the people I know who like this record most are folks who aren’t big Enemies fans. But there are exceptions!

IS: So was anyone else involved at all?

Jon: Keny Siegal produced it at Old Soul Studios, his house in Catskill NY. He was incredibly patient and encouraging. It took me a long time to play a halfway decent performance of many of the songs. Tony Lauria came in and played the three harder songs on piano. That’s about it. Kenny played percussion on one song. The rest is just me. Kenny even wanted me to do all the backing vocals and I think it was a good choice both for logistical and artistic reasons.

IS: What’s the grand release plan?

Jon: Ah, Pete, I wonder if I shall ever have any grand plans again. We’re releasing it at Joe’s Pub this Friday. And at the brand new Helsinki in Hudson on Saturday.

I say “we” because the band is kindly backing me on a few of the tunes and we’ll work the songs (in Hudson anyway) into a double set of other band songs. Beyond that I honestly don’t know. There is a gentle quality to this record. For me to get all pushy and aggressive about strategy and career would kind of poison the experience.

Sure, it would be lovely if someone rode in on a white horse with money and a promotional plan, but I have reached a point where I’m no longer hungrily trying to get to those people, at least within the context of a traditional music career. And I was never very good at that anyway.

So, mark it as a labor of love.

IS: And what’s next for the big band?

Jon: The band is currently making a CD called Wild Goosechase Expedition, also produced by Kenny Siegal. It’s turning into one of those that’s difficult to finish! But we’re trying. Should be ready before the end of the year.

And I’m still hoping that we can find backers for our musical/rock opera, Above Hell’s Kitchen …

Reviews  Larkin Grimm, Parplar

Brainwashed | Friday, 09 January 2009

Written by John Kealy

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Some CDs beg to be played over and over again. This is one of those times when the disc absolutely refuses to go back into its case and demands to go back in the player. Normally I cannot listen to an album more than once a day but Larkin Grimm’s third album makes for a rare exception. It is perfectly performed and the recording itself is flawless, this is one of those rare albums that impresses from every conceivable angle.

Young God Records

Grimm’s music is as oddball (in a good way) as her description on the Young God Records website makes her out to be (brought up in a cult, tales of the Alaskan wastes, a shamaness and a vagabond lifestyle either make for a very interesting person or a highly contrived back story; Grimm seems genuine). There are no pretensions of weirdness here, just the feeling that she knows her own path but it does not necessarily cross with the main road. Label mates Fire On Fire play on the album, as do members of the Angels of Light, which makes for a familiar mood from the offset but that is not to say that Grimm’s music is overpowered by the distinctive styles of the many players here. Her personality and quirks shine through undiminished.

For an album full of energy and life, the opening song “They Were Wrong” paints a very different picture. It is a quiet and chilling song, Grimm intones “Who said to you you’re going to be all right/Well they were wrong, wrong, wrong/In my mind you’re already gone.” With this as my first exposure to Parplar, I was expecting a soul-wrenching descent into deeper and darker places.

Yet almost immediately after “Ride That Cyclone” brings the album around full circle in mood (although lyrically it is still dark) and style. The lurching rhythm is like one of Michael Gira’s (who produces the album) but like a cyclone the music spins around the listener in a dizzying and breathtaking manner. Elsewhere on Parplar, cartoonish vocals and distinctly off-kilter lyrics make for a strange listening experience; songs like “Dominican Rum” and “Mina Minou” add a surreal vibe to the album and make Grimm’s musical persona as interesting as her biography sheet.

As refreshing as the odder moments on this album are, thankfully Grimm balances the weirdness with some exceptionally strong songs in a more “serious” style. “Anger in Your Liver” and “All the Pleasures” are a pair of brief but enjoyable songs in the middle of the album that show Grimm in a more traditional songwriting light. Both songs make it evident that Grimm does not have to hide behind some absurd mask, she has enough talent to let the songs speak for themselves when she wants them to.

It is hard to find any fault with Parplar. Granted, the freak folk scene has been flogged to death and whose corpse has been dragged through the streets in a macabre mockery of itself but like any style, there is always going to be someone who can pull something of worth from something that seems exhausted. Grimm fits this bill and I urge anyone with even a passing interest in good, honest music to go out and buy this.

Larkin Grimm: Parplar

Label: Young God

For those of you who thought the freak-folk movement was missing a dollop or two of genuine freakiness, Larkin Grimm is your girl. On Parplar, her Young God debut, Grimm, the product of Appalachian hippie cult parents and a Yale education, veers from unbelievable beauty to ghoulish spookiness. The gorgeous and sparse loneliness of opener “They Were Wrong” aches and soothes simultaneously, but is interrupted by the ferocious gallop of “Ride That Cyclone,” letting you know that this forest is inhabited not just by fairies and unicorns but also by goblins and sex-starved witches. In fact, on “Blond and Golden Johns” she sounds exactly like a witch (or what I imagine them to sound like). She is able to vary, from track to track, between the sound of a kind and loving mother, an excited cult leader, and a heartbroken lover, each voice authentic and firmly rooted. Grimm is no tourist. She’s a vagabond anarchist folkie, for real, and the music is just as real, raw, and beautiful as a result. (Travis)

November 3, 2008

Larkin Grimm - Parplar Review

by TRISTRAM LOZAW

ESSENTIAL “Ride That Cyclone”

This untamed, moon-worshiping, blood-and-guts Appalachian gypsy is a peculiar folkie. Larkin Grimm’s 15-song debut for Michael Gira’s Young God label is informed by sex magic, the Holy Ghost, and lizards; Gira calls her “the sound of the eternal mother and wrath of all women.” Indeed, as Grimm has stated, “Parplar” is “a lesbian feminist album,” estrogen battling the testosterone of her “beefy male collaborators” – labelmates Fire on Fire and others adding whirls of accordion, horns, banjo, and guitars. These synergistic skirmishes add a feral energy to the tuneful, haunting gallop of “Ride That Cyclone” and the short, disturbing “The Dip.” “Damn the man in you,” Grimm intones on the sprightly title track. But her shaman’s dementia, as eccentrically vibrant as it is (though subject to a chipmunk-y shrillness), isn’t Grimm’s best calling card. That prize belongs to the old-world purity of her voice. There’s an almost tender innocence found beneath the stark, dark lullaby of “They Were Wrong” and the hallucinogenic coos of “Be My Host.” Add the gently clanging symphonette “My Justine” and the bubbly traditionalism of “All the Pleasures” and, heard in the right light, “Parplar” is a cunningly remarkable album. (Out now) – TRISTRAM LOZAW

By  Steve LaBate  on October 8, 2008 3:20 PM

Boston band Apollo Sunshine first appeared on the radar in 2003, when it released promising debut Katonah. Two years later, in 2005, the band stepped it up with an impressive self-titled sophomore album that wound up at #13 on Paste’s Best Albums of the Year list. This summer, Apollo Sunshine released psychedelic opus Shall Noise Upon, and today the powerhouse live band kicks off its fall tour, with two solid months of shows scheduled for Europe and the U.S.

Paste recently caught up with AS bandmates Jeremy Black, Jesse Gallagher and Sam Cohen to talk about the new album, their almost-finished stop-motion-animation video, and hitting the road in a school bus powered by fryer grease.

Paste: Last time I saw you guys was about a year ago—you came by the office to play a few songs.

Sam: Yeah, we were on our way down to play Langerado last summer.

Paste: At that time, you were between records, you’d just done an instrumental project that you ended up shelving. With the latest album, Shall Noise Upon, was it a completely new project or was it taken from some of the material you’d already been working on and then developed further?

Sam: It was a new project. None of the stuff from the instrumental album made it on there—it was all more recent.

Jeremy: Actually, some of the instrumental stuff was used for the interludes on the new album.

Sam: What instrumental stuff did we use?

Jeremy: “Wolf Frog White.”

Sam: Oh, that’s true. The drum beat from that.

Jesse: We used about 10 seconds of a drumbeat. Yeah. [laughter]

Sam: The other two hours of material are still sitting on a shelf.

Paste: So where did you record the new album? Tell me a little bit about the sessions for Shall Noise Upon.

Sam: We were at this place Old Soul Studios in Catskill, N.Y. It’s this cool studio, this guy’s house really, and he [he being Kenny “The Wolf” Siegal, of the band Johnny Society] filled it with this amazing collection of instruments and good recording gear. It’s his own studio. Just in the last little while, bands like us have started using it and making records there. It’s a sweet, sweet place because it feels like a home—it doesn’t have the typical professional-studio vibe.

Paste: What did the rest of you like about this place?

Jeremy: It was just real inspiring to be there, and have all the gear and equipment and instruments he has. It’s just the kind of place you walk into and want to make music. There’s something in the air when you’re in there.

Jesse: It was situated in a cool area in New York. It was in the Catskill Mountains, and it was right down the street from this really nice bird sanctuary a bunch of us would go check out in the morning. And you could just get on a bike and roll around in some nature. It had an old American vibe to it.

Paste: That kind of setting, and having all these instruments around—did that shape the sound of the record?

Jeremy: Definitely. We didn’t really go there with too much intention of what we were doing. I mean, I think we knew in our heads what we were gonna do, but…

Jesse: Yeah, we just let it come out as we got there and got comfortable. It was just a really nice place.

Paste: Your past records have been ambitious, but Shall Noise Upon feels even more so. There’s all this complex instrumentation and arranging. Do you feel like you’ve developed as arrangers?

Sam: On this record, we just let our imaginations run wild. It was like the opposite of the other way of making a record, which is: Write the songs, rehearse and then just go in and blast it out perfectly. We were much more imagining things, considering all possibilities, and that led to, “you know what’d be great here is a whole string section, or a bunch of horns,” and just going for it and indulging in every far-out idea we had. And that was the goal, to make a record that sounded like it was from all over the world at all times. And we got a bunch of friends to help us make it sound like that.

Jesse: It was great to have the support of a label [World’s Fair imprint, Headless Heroes] that would put us in the studio for a long time. The situation, the place was just perfect—everyone had their own bedroom, it was this big-ass old house. You’d wake up in the morning and start playing a pump organ; someone would come in and plug in a Theremin. We weren’t bound to the whole, “OK, I’m the bass player, you’re the guitar player”—It was very much like, “let’s just craft some sonic, weird shit.” And the fact that we got to stay there for a long time and experiment without feeling pressured to have something coming out was nice.

Paste: How long were you there?

Sam: We were there for six weeks. We went for three weeks, and then had some time off, and then went for three more weeks. And we spent even more time on the record, amongst ourselves at home. We spent two weeks mixing it, and did more recording then. It was a long process—we had a lot of time to get it how we wanted.

Jesse: We built up and then deconstructed, and having the time to work on it like that was really cool.

Paste: Hearing the scenario, it reminds me of The Band at Big Pink.

Jesse: Yeah, I feel like it was probably similar to the way they were.

Paste: A lot of bands seem really rushed to put out new material, but you seem to really take your time.

Sam: That’s an understatement! [laughs] I mean, some people are even worse than us, but we definitely take our time.

Paste: What do you think is the advantage to that?

Jesse: It doesn’t seem so forced.

Sam: Nothing against bands that do make their albums real quick. I respect and admire that, as well. I’m sure someday we’ll do something that way, too. But, I don’t know, we just do what seems to be happening.

Paste: What else have you been up to in the last year, besides the new record? I know you live in different cities now—Jeremy in San Fransisco, Jesse in Boston and Sam in New York.

Jeremy: We’d get together from time to time and do recordings. We did some recording in Boston—Jesse lives above this art gallery—and we did some recordings in Katonah, [N.Y.]. We’d work on music here and there.

Sam: Even living in different cities, three weeks is about as long we’ll go without doing a show.

Paste: You have a pretty full tour schedule coming up. Looks like you’re hitting it pretty hard behind this new record.

Sam: Yeah, we’re getting ready to play a bunch of shows.

Paste: I heard there was this really interesting multimedia show you just played in New York. What was that all about?

Jesse: Yeah, Monkeytown is a spot with couches on all four sides. I don’t know, I picture some sheiky Indian people with hookahs laying on couches—that style. And the entertainment sets up in the middle. So it’s a really weird, intimate thing; it only holds like 50 people. But they have seven projectors and each of the four walls is a screen. Our friend Edan, who helped make some beats on the new record and is just a good friend of ours, has a really crazy movie collection, and he played snippets of a bunch of different movies. It wasn’t something we rehearsed, but he’s a very talented person and has good taste, and we just did our thing and fed off of each other.

Sam: It was a treat for the senses.

Paste: Is this multimedia approach something you might be interested in doing when you go on tour?

Jesse: Well, Monkeytown has four giant projectors, so I don’t think we’ll be able to do that. Plus, Edan does his own thing, so probably not. It’d be cool in an ideal world, but we’re still at the stage where we’re touring to make money to pay rent. I don’t know if we can bring out a whole crew just yet.

Sam: Once we can get our own lighting system, though, I know who I want to build it: the guy who makes all our pedals and stuff. We sometimes daydream about set design and lights that are triggered by instruments. Maybe someday.

Jesse: If Apollo Sunshine were to make money, man, we would fucking blow minds for sure! Hopefully someday we’ll get that opportunity.

Paste: Who’s the guy who makes the pedals?

Sam: Well, there’s two guys. The guy that originally built them is this guy Patrick who has a company called Herscheltronics. And lately I’ve been working with a friend of his, Peter Edwards, who’s got this thing Casper Electronics, and he can build anything, he’s just genius.

By Kevin W. Smith

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.11.2008

Ratatat recorded LP3 in a ghost-ridden house in upstate New York called Old Soul Studios, owned by a fedora-wearing music fanatic who goes by the name “The Wolf.”

“There was definitely a crazy feeling in the house,” Ratatat guitarist Mike Stroud said from a truck stop just outside of Seattle. “We had never worked so quickly before. We’d do like a song every day.”

Ratatat usually is a duo, Stroud and Evan Mast, but it tours with a third musician and will play Club Congress on Saturday, followed by the weekly dance night, called “Bang! Bang!”

The group was so energized to be out of New York City and not recording in small apartments that the songs for “LP3″ came together quicker than for any other Ratatat album.

The band’s music is almost entirely instrumental, varying from experimental, organ-driven lounge to hip-hop backdrops to thumping dance.

Having opened for acts such as Daft Punk, the Brooklyn group is sometimes confused with electronic artists, but except for the beats, Ratatat’s music is recorded with live instruments.

The Ratatat songwriting process usually starts with Mast making a beat, then instruments are added to fit.

Almost none of Ratatat’s songs are written in advance, Stroud said, and Catskill’s Old Soul provided many chances to experiment, with the first floor filled with a variety of instruments, from harpsichords to mellotrons.

“We just recorded every idea we got,” Stroud said.

During the surreal mellowness of LP3, you can hear what sound like harps, bongos, organs, vocoders, pianos, chanting, video-game blips, electric guitar and hand claps.

To Stroud’s dismay, Ratatat didn’t experience any paranormal activity at Old Soul.

Stroud recalled a friend’s recording session at Old Soul that involved unexplained “aggressive stomping” from the ceiling, which might have gone nice over one of Mast’s beats.

Although Stroud didn’t see any dead people in his 40 or so days there, he did meet some creepy locals at a seedy, pirate-themed bar in Catskill.

The encounters only strengthened the duo’s decision to mostly recline in Old Soul’s backyard during downtime.

LP3 was released in July and cracked Billboard’s top 200 albums chart, to the band’s surprise.

“I don’t expect to sell many records,” he said. “I expect people to steal them, basically. So it was kind of exciting: ‘People are actually buying it?’ “

I wonder if anyone else has secretly taken a RATATAT song and recorded their own vocal track over it. I did. In 2004 I had just returned from a literal mind-blowing journey in Peru and I was oddly placed in the basement of my ex-neighbors house in the suburbs of Nowhere, Kansas. I laced that track. I laced it real nice with a shure 57 microphone. But I never sent the song to RATATAT. I’ve only listened to the song a handful of times and I played it for two of my brothers. It’s one of those songs for the vault. It’s my little secret. So those gentlemen from RATATAT just sent me LP3. And they asked me to write their thingy-thang. Already I’ve found another sizzling track on this new one that I am POSITIVELY going to lace with voices, and WITHOUT their permission. Which makes me wonder why I’m busy typing away here when I could be lacing that track. But this is a favor for RATATAT. I suppose I’m returning the favor that they did for me in the Summer of Sunshine, 2007. I was fresh off of Panther Mountain, wearing hot pink soccer shorts and LOTS of coconut oil, and those guys from RATATAT came over to the studio I was at in Catskill, NY. It was actually just a big old house full of organs and amplifiers and all the other crazy sound makers you could possibly want to make a happening happen.

Called “Old Soul”, the mansion was haunted. A really ancient president of the United States had lived and died in there. That dude Uncle Sam, like the real guy from the posters, he grew up next door. It’s the sort of place you definitely want to make some smoke, burn some sage and stay up all night. Every night if possible. So the two boys from RATATAT, Evan (beat maker) and Mike (melody keeper) shows up and I make a big salad with cashews on top and they decline my offer for coconuts. In this time I’m eating like a little bird. I was feeding them their meals for the whole weekend, but not serving enough food. Those guys are so polite that they would just sneak away from the studio and find a quick bite around town instead of simply asking me for more to eat. I showed them the ethereal pyramid I had set up around the studio using quartz crystal capstones. They didn’t roll their eyes and they actually looked curious during my ramblings about the pyramids. I told them what I know. So we got right to work. They laced some of my tracks, supplied me with beats, and helped arrange some things for my new album WHITE ARK. It was thrilling to watch the two of them at work in the studio. What stood out the most to me was their silent intelligence, their telepathic capacities. I observed again and again how Evan and Mike would download the contents of my mind perfectly, and then communicate in between themselves with minimal cues like eye gestures or crotch clenches, and soon enough they were filling the room with swirling guitar and organ parts, giving my song skeletons a brand new nervous system and all their soft tissues. We would have long improv sessions in the night, pulsing emerald lights from the corners of the crystal pyramid. The energy flowed perfectly and the boys were digging Old Soul so much they decided to record what would become LP3 there. They booked 40 days and 40 nights, and while they weren’t quite fasting in the desert, due to their auspicious encounter with the Egyptian rug dealer Mumtaz Khan (see track 11 of LP3) in downtown Catskill, they laced the joint with even more crystal pyramids. ************** RATATAT and I had been talking about collaboration for many years. I first met Mike in the summer of 2001. He was a 20-year-old hired-gun guitar phenom, his first time out on the road. We recognized each other as confidants and co-conspirators immediately. In this time Mike played me the first ever RATATAT home recordings, only then they were calling themselves “Cherry”. It was some old-skool 4-track fuzzy- guitar-shit. The sound quality was low but the spirit was spilling out the glass. I couldn’t believe the nerve of these guys, making my little brain grasp for familiar territory, all I could think was how they had somehow mixed Beethoven with Wu-tang with Megadeth. Damn. I was actually a little jealous. Why didn’t I think of that?? So now that we’ve grown up a bit and now that we’re collaborating out in the open, all the jealousy has melted. I mean, those guys are just so innocent and cute in the first place, and I totally have forgiven them for remixing those Missy Elliot tracks. I’ve listened to LP3 about 7 times now. This record is the first one RATATAT has made that is truly for the Whole Planet. They’re Graduating Galactic. I can already smell the toasted cardamom and envision LP3 crackling from the tiny speakers of a crazy-ass curry cafe in Bombay. Or the deep bass throbs floating out over the sea during one of those full moon beach parties in Maui. Or blasting along with the laser light show each night at the Giza Complex, the beats penetrating into the hidden chambers located under the paws of the Great Sphinx. Or the synthesizers cutting through the cool air over the highlands of Columbia, the sounds landing in the wide open hearts of the indigenous tribal leaders, the women smiling with that reassurance that comes only after having so deeply seen into the future, the men are dancing fiercely in their all white tunics with cactus-woven shoulder bags. With their telepathy still fully intact, the Indians see visions of two skinny white boys from Brooklyn delivering the sonic fire flowers. Then they see with their inner-vision the badboy heavy metal-style “RATATAT” font on the back of the record and exclaim to themselves, “Wow…that translates as ”Dream Cream” in our native tongue!!” -White Flight, 2008

By Bill Cummings

God Is In The TV

New York Electronic double act Mike Stroud and Evan Mast better known as Ratatat released their new album LP3 through XL earlier this year, the follow up to 2006′s Classics and 2004′s self-titled debut. Since their last full released they’ve built a strong reputation as remix artists working on Bjork’s Wanderlust and on a track for Animal Collective culminating in the release of the second in their acclaimed Remixes series, featuring bootleg remixes of Notorious BIG and Young Buck among others. Remixes Volume II also featured exclusive new freestyles from Beans (Warp) and Despot (DefJux) and is currently available for free download on the band’s site, www.ratatatmusic.com.

The new album LP3 came together in a matter of weeks after the duo – were asked to produce some tracks for their friend White Flight who introduced them to Old Soul Studios.

Old Soul is a large old house in the small town of Catskill in upstate New York. A veritable treasure trove of keyboard instruments, from a grand piano and harpsichord through to a mellotron and Wurlitzer. Pretty much all of the instruments at Old Soul made it onto LP3 giving the record a much broader palette of sounds. The band also decided to mix the album in a studio for the first time, heading to Trout in Brooklyn, NY to mix the entire record down onto 1/4inch tape.

And the GIITTV verdict on LP3? ‘Ratatat have always made music which just so happens to be electronic, working outside of the conventions of electro – club bangers were occasional and though they did make remixes, these were slower tempo hip hop efforts rather than reworkings of whatever was popular on dancefloors of the time. Sweeping guitars (that were actual guitars rather than the synthesised lot) and an ear for perfectionist production led Ratatat to form a sound suited to home-listening rather than at a club, and LP3 takes this approach even further, rather taking the easy route of heading in a more mainstream direction. It’s easy to admire the musicianship of Ratatat but ultimately there’s not much else to do when you listen to LP3, as with no groove, few hooks and no vocals to grab you, it ends up being not a lot more than background music. Decent background music, admittedly: but background music nonetheless.’

We caught up with one half of Ratatat – guitarist Mike Stroud – for a chatette:

Hi there how are you?

Hi, I’m good, a little sleepy. How are you?

What’s your name and what do you do?

My name is Mike Stroud and I play guitar and some harpsichords, pianos, tablas etc. in Ratatat.

When did you meet as an act?

We started making music together in 2001, just recording some joke songs for fun at first.

Who would you pinpoint as your main musical influences?

Lately, baroque and classical music. Schubert’s 8th Symphony is my new favorite. I also love old rock n’ roll bands like The Kinks, The Zombies, Queen, especially Brian May. We’re both huge hip hop fans. We got to meet Wu-Tang Clan the other night and Ghostface Killah is probably my favorite rapper of all time, so that was really exciting.

Can you describe your sound in five words?

The exact opposite of jazz.

What can you tell me about your label? How did you end up working with XL?

We were discovered in 2003 by Matt Thornhill at XL. He had heard two of our songs on our website and I met him in London and gave him a couple more songs to listen to, and that was it.

I feel really lucky to have been picked up by XL because they’ve got a lot of great acts and they let us do basically whatever we want. They’re also good friends to us now.

What can fans expect from your live show? Who is supporting you?

The tour we’re on right now is a bit strange because there isn’t a supporting act for most of the songs. It seems like we’re doing a bunch of club nights where there’s only one band. Fans who haven’t seen us before should know that we don’t stand on stage with a laptop and send emails, I play guitar mostly, Evan plays bass, drums occasionally, and autoharp, and we also have a keyboard player. The show is pretty dancey and loud right now.

Can you tell us about your new record?

The main thing about our new record is that it’s the first time we ever went into a proper studio to record. The studio was called Old Soul and it’s in this really boring suburban town in upstate New York called Catskill. It’s more a less a mansion filled with random instruments like a grand piano, harpsichord, mellotron, tons of different vintage organs, drums, etc. It seemed like a mansion anyway. We had been used to recording in tiny apartments in Brooklyn with just a few instruments at our disposal. I think the excitement of having so much space all of a sudden, along with tons of new instruments, made for a really fun and spontaneous recording session. We wrote and recorded a new song just about every day we were there. There’s a bunch of new organ sounds for us, and much more live percussion on this record.

Do you like touring? What do you like to listen to on your tourbus? What do you like to do on your days off?

Yeah, touring’s great. It’s much nicer if you have a tour bus because all the traveling gets pretty exhausting. We’re in a splitter now, which is basically just a van, so we listen to the driver’s choice. I usually don’t know what we’re listening too. I’ve been listening on headphones to two bands a lot, The Idle Race, which is Jeff Lynne’s first band, and White Flight.

What do you think about the new music download revolution? How is it changing the business?

I’m probably the least business minded person in the music business, but it seems that it’s becoming harder and harder to earn money as a band. The money seems to come mostly from touring now, and licensing as well. I don’t expect to make much money at all from record sales the way that we might have in the 90s or earlier. It feels kind of weird selling a song to a car commercial or something like that, but it pays the bills.

Since my site is called God Is In The TV what’s your favourite TV show?

Hmmm, I love that show “Freaks and Geeks”. My favorite of all time is “Twin Peaks”.

What are your future plans?

Eat lunch, take a nap. Hopefully make a couple more records and buy a house somewhere.

Thanks for your time

Thanks a lot.

Ratatat album released their album LP3 in July through XL recordings.

Evan made a video for the Ratatat single Mirando – you may recognise it from the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Predator.

Ratatat

LP3 is the third studio album from Ratatat, the follow-up to 2006′s Classics and 2004′s self-titled debut. Since the release of Classics, Ratatat have toured relentlessly, headlining shows around the world. They were asked to open for Daft Punk at Los Angeles Sports Arena back in June 2007, before they jetted off to play shows in Hawaii and Japan. They have also added their unique sound to a recent remix of Bjork’s Wanderlust and released the second in their acclaimed Remixes’series, featuring bootleg remixes of Notorious BIG and Young Buck among others. Remixes Volume II also featured exclusive new freestyles from Beans (Warp) and Despot (DefJux) and is currently available for free download on the band’s site www.ratatatmusic.com.

Whereas Classics took them months to record, LP3 came together in a matter of weeks after the duo – Mike Stroud and Evan Mast – were asked to produce some tracks for their friend White Flight who introduced them to Old Soul Studios.

Old Soul is a large old house in the small town of Catskill in upstate New York. It doesn’t have much in the way of hi-tech recording equipment but does have a wealth of keyboard instruments from a grand piano and harpsichord through to a mellotron and Wurlitzer. Pretty much all of the instruments at Old Soul made it onto LP3 giving the record a much broader palette of sounds. The record is much more dynamic than their previous two, with a leaning towards keyboards as opposed to guitars, and live percussion rather than programmed beats.

The band also decided to mix the album in a studio for the first time, and headed to Trout in Brooklyn, NY to mix the entire record down onto 1/4inch tape which has lent the entire album another layer of atmosphere.

Ratatat have also had some friends remix tracks from the album, including Animal Collective who’ve turned ‘Mirando’ into a 10 minute techno wonder. After several remixes under their various solo guises, this is Animal Collective’s first remix done under their own name. YACHT, Zongamin, Copy and E*Rock (brother of Evan ‘E*Vax’ Mast) have also taken on some album tracks, expect to hear these soon.

LP3 sounds like the album Ratatat have wanted to make for some time; equally stripped back and fuller sounding than their previous two. Overflowing with ideas and with more pop and dancefloor moments mixed in with their unique take on atmospheric, instrumental rock. LP3 could have easily come across as disjointed, instead Ratatat have created a fully formed, 21st Century record instilled with the unique sound that made their name. LP3 sounds completely timeless and very, very now.

by Jamie Milton

26 June 2008

When you learn about how one of your favourite albums was recorded, it’s hard not to enthuse about it all every time you mention the record. Take Bon Iver for example, rooted to the spot accompanied by the “cabin talk” that always has and always will surround his debut album ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’. Ratatat seem to have avoided that same this-is-why-the-album’s-so-good clause but Festivalwise is finding it difficult to let things stay that way. ‘LP3’, as surprising as it is, is Ratatat’s third record. Its recording process involves spontaneity and a derelict old house in the West of New York.

That house set the foundations for Ratatat’s greatest piece of work so far, therefore we had to mention it when we caught up with one half of the duo, Evan Mast. They seem just as excitable as we are when talk of these “Old Soul studios” creeps up; Avoiding jargon talk about the exact details of the supposedly “isolated” location, Mast is more keen to tell Festivalwise about how the magic happened. “We signed up for 40 days and 40 nights and it was just Mike and I in this big house for the duration of it”. Needless to say, there was some kind of abstract influence from the start. “We got super focused really quickly. The first day there we made ‘Dura’ and ‘Mi Viejo’ – two of the record’s most outstanding moments.

This rapid, quick-fire, spontaneous take on recording has been done successfully by the likes of R.E.M, Arctic Monkeys and many more to mention. On the other side of the spectrum, it can be the very reason why an act “loses it”. Mast agrees that it can sometimes be a matter of luck – “ I think those initial responses to a new environment can trigger some interesting ideas. It’s just a matter of finding the right spots.” The idea of recording ‘LP3’ in Old Soul wasn’t an organized process either, making it all the more interesting. “Initially we went up to old soul to help our friend Justin with his new White Flight album and we just really liked the place and got along well with ‘the Wolf’, the guy who owns the studio. He was going out of town for 2 months on tour, so we decided to rent the studio while he was gone.”

Those 2 months were all they needed. Surrounded by a realm of new instruments and new ideas, it all came together like a hand-clap. “It felt like we were racing to keep up with the ideas” recites Mast as he goes on to explain the short time-span for the recording; “with LP3 we were trusting our initial instincts a lot more than ever before” Ratatat clearly found their comfort spot. There’s a consistent bunch of running themes scattered across ‘LP3’, from Eastern European influence to addictive beats – the only element of the record not originating via. Old Soul. “We always write while we record. I’d made a stockpile of drum beats ahead of time, but that was it. We were touring in a van in Europe in February of 2007 and we had these long drives between shows…I was making a lot of beats on my laptop while we travelled.”

Old Soul can however, set itself apart as the only reason for this chunk of inspiration that found itself at the feet of the duo last year; “I’m not sure where the ideas came from. We weren’t really listening to much music while we were recording….I stopped answering my phone and checking my email for the most part and we just completely focused on the music.” Isolation wasn’t the only method – “We got into this amazing rhythm, this steady pace. It felt like when you’re riding a bike really fast and you switch into a high gear and your legs are suddenly moving half as fast but the bike just continues moving even faster.”

One running theme that’s remained from Ratatat’s debut right up to their latest is the impossible task of categorizing the Brooklyn two-piece. They remain incomparable to any other act – “without sounding arrogant” states Mast. Some may draw comparisons to Daft Punk, Holy Fuck or Animal Collective but that would simply be passed as lazy. Direct musical influence came from “Chemirani”, an Iranian drum trio introduced upon the band by studio-owner White Flight. That aside, it’s difficult to figure out what musical elements combine to make this genuine, original sound. “We weren’t really listening to much music while we were recording. Sometimes we’d watch music videos on tv while we ate dinner, but that was mostly really horrible stuff.”

Previous record ‘Classics’ isn’t on par with ‘LP3’ due to many factors, especially when it comes to atmosphere, despite its ability to excel past the latest record with dance-factor. ‘Classics’ told a different story to ‘LP3’, taking not two months, but two years to produce. The immediacy of ‘LP3’ is what makes it so special, and whether Ratatat can master the instantaneous process remains to be seen. For future projects though, Mast and his companion are keen to play the same hand. “now that we’ve tried it, I’m quite hooked on the idea of recording in studios”, Evan gets slightly carried away in his own thoughts – “I would love to record in another land sometime…overseas, on an island, in a forest, in New Zealand, with a Turkish string section,” but as obscure as these ideas appear on paper, no-one can instantly dismiss them to going through such a process.

Besides, if we weren’t aware of Old Soul and its direct influence on the duo, we’d all be playing guessing games of how it all came about to sound like such a unique, frantic, high-spirited record. But maybe you don’t need that sort of extravagancy when Old Soul is at your side….

by Jamie Milton

MFM

Ratatat have been slowly causing a fuss in the musical expertee community. Third-record, aptly titled LP3 is on the brink of finding itself in all good record stores and all good people’s end of year lists – it’s their most instantaneous, interesting album to date and we got hold of one half of the duo, Evan Mast, to comment on how a simple meeting in an old New York house ended up in the short-spanned recording of their most impressive record to date.

-Why did you choose to mix an album in a studio for the first time LP3, was it simply more wealth to the resources or a desire to evolve the record in one way or another?

we’ve always talked about mixing our records in a proper studio. in the past we were just never able to find the right place to do it. our mixing process is pretty simple and straightforward though. all the decisions about arrangements are structure are made while we’re recording, so mixing for us is just about finalizing the sounds. getting everything situated properly. EQing, getting the levels right…

- Old Soul studios must have had a profound influence on the record. If you could, talk about the experience, did it change your perception of what sort of a record you’d like to make?

it was a great experience. everything just kind of fell into place. initially we went up to old soul to help our friend justin with his new White Flight album and we just really liked the place and got along well with the Wolf, the guy who owns the studio. he was going out of town for 2 months on tour, so we decided to rent the studio while he was gone. we signed up for 40 days and 40 nights and it was just mike and I in this big house for the duration of it. we got super focused really quickly. the first day there we made “dura” and “mi viejo”. i don’t think we’ve ever been so productive and worked so quickly before. it felt like we were racing to keep up with the ideas. its quite a contrast to classics which took about 2 years to make. it was like the whole process was condensed into this very intense short period of time. i’m really happy with how deep into we got. by the end of our time there the ideas were getting really strange.

- How do you intend to move LP3 onto the live stage, considering the multi-instrumentalist formation the record’s taken?

we’re still working that out. we’ve been talking about getting some more musicians to help us out. i’d love to get a good zarb player on board. i think mike and i will be doing a lot more instrument changes than we have in the past as well.

- What makes LP3 vary so much from your other two records?

i think the main difference is that songs are more immediate. we have a tendency to overcomplicate and over think tracks a lot of the time – with LP3 we were trusting our initial instincts a lot more than ever before.

- If approached, would you be willing for one of your songs to be used in the opening of a film sequence or an advert as it’s a common opinion that a lot of your music would be well suited towards that.

it all depends on the film or the ad.

- Was the writing process spontaneously done at Old Soul or did you enter the studio with a chunk of ideas?

we always write while we record. i had made a stockpile of drum beats ahead of time, but that was it. we were touring in a van in europe in february of 2007 and we had these long drives between shows, so i was making a lot of beats on my laptop while we travelled.

we didn’t have any plans ahead of going into the studio though. we’d just put on a beat and start throwing down ideas and start reacting to them and see where it goes. thats the only method that really seems to work for us.

- Why did this record take less time to conjure up than the other two?

we really isolated ourselves this time. i stopped answering my phone and checking my email for the most part and we just completely focused on the music. we got into this amazing rhythm, this steady pace. it felt like when you’re riding a bike really fast and you switch into a high gear and your legs are suddenly moving half as fast but the bike just continues moving even faster.

- Would you agree with many people’s opinion that you are “incomparable” to any other act, without sounding arrogant?!

yes… without sounding arrogant

- The record dabbles with several genres and also foreign sounds like a Spanish-European take on ‘Mi Viejo’. Did that come about via. the records you were listening to at the time?

i’m not sure where the ideas came from. we weren’t really listening to much music while we were recording. sometimes we’d watch music videos on tv while we ate dinner, but that was mostly really horrible stuff. we did get really into the j holiday track “bed”. thats a really amazing song. naked brothers band “if thats not love”… we were also listening to a lot of Chemirani, which is an Iranian drum trio that WHITE FLIGHT turned us onto

- A simple question, why the simple title to the album?

it rhymes

- Did Old Soul significantly progress your record and would you want to go back to a similar, inspirational scenario when recording future material?

now that we’ve tried it, i’m quite hooked on the idea of recording in studios. i would love to record in another land sometime…overseas, on an island, in a forest, in new zealand, with a turkish string section… i’m definitely up for trying something new. i think those inital responses to a new environment can trigger some interesting ideas. its just a matter of finding the right spots.

Ratatat: New Grooves

from volume 03 issue 02 // Scott Harrell

As Ratatat, Evan Mast and Mike Stroud have spent the last five years tearing down the wall between guitar-driven indie-rock and glitchy, ultramodern laptop electronica. Their simultaneously beat-driven and atmospheric efforts have made them both underground-venue favorites and in-demand remix aritsts, and have helped to weaken the outdated yet enduring notion that making music on a computer is somehow less substantial than picking up a guitar or plinking away at a piano.

“I feel like we’ve established ourselves, and our sound,” says guitarist Stroud. “But there’s always gonna be old-school people who want to have that argument. But at least with younger people, it’s becoming more of a legitimate thing, to make stuff … electronically or whatever, rather than like a Bob Dylan singer-songwriter type thing.”

Which isn’t to say Mast and Stroud are against the more organic styles of music-making. They tour regularly, and for the making of their aptly-named third full-length LP3, the duo left the confines of their Brooklyn HQ to record at Old Soul Studios, a glorified country house in the Catskills brimming with vintage organs, instruments and equipment.

“It put a different twist on it,” Stroud says. “It was just really inspiring, being surrounded by harpsichords and pianos. It was a very positive environment, and it was just the two of us in this big house, working all the time.”

The resulting songs are somehow warmer than much of Ratatat’s back catalog, yet retain plenty of the project’s signature guitar trickery, rhythms and crisp, super-contemporary edge. What at first listen sounds surprisingly laid-back gradually reveals its busy, lively inner layers; traditional hand-drums and other percussion instruments are processed to hypnotic effect without sacrificing their innate and instantly recognizable reality. LP3 is admittedly somewhat lighter on electronic beats, but here the energy and drive come from congas and bongos, from swells of organ and jaunty piano lines and multiple guitar harmonies.

“I guess it is pretty mellow overall,” Stroud muses. “There are a couple of intense songs, but I think the next record is gonna be more dancy.”

LP3 is also, for lack of a better word, more druggy than some previous Ratatat releases. Or perhaps druggy in a different sense; where a disc like ’06′s Classics often evokes the speedy, metallic buzz of a lab-crafted designer drug, LP3 can seem contemplative and pleasantly freaked out and naturally hallucinogenic.

“There may be something to that,” says Stroud with a laugh. “Part of that is due to the bunch of old ’70s keyboards at Old Soul that definitely helped with that kind of sound.

“And, we may have been doing drugs.”

Ratatat’s LP3 comes out July 8 on XL Recordings.

ratatatmusic.com

Reviews

Ratatat Branch Out and Gear Up

Do androids dream of electric pianos?

By Michael D. Ayers, The Village Voice

Wednesday, July 7 2008

Last fall, while you were still debating whether LCD Soundsystem or Battles was the best electro-rock band of 2007, Ratatat— Brooklyn’s other white meat—were upstate in Catskill, holed up at an old mansion where former president Martin Van Buren got married. It’s not a destination site or anything, and the two dudes who comprise the band—Evan Mast and Mike Stroud—aren’t exactly history buffs. It’s just that the house is now owned by some guy known as “The Wolf” (dig the Pulp Fiction reference), who has christened the place Old Soul Studios and taken to producing folks like Joseph Arthur, Willy Mason, and someone/some band called Mr. Forky.

Ratatat had initially dropped by just to help out a buddy who records as White Flight, but soon they stumbled across some recording time of their own, not to mention a bevy of new instruments to fuck around with. “It was really dingy and dark all over the place—spiders and cobwebs in the corners,” guitarist Stroud recalls. “But you’re just surrounded by instruments. There are 20 different kinds of organs, mellotrons, and good recording equipment. When we come home and look at our bullshit studio, we laugh.”

Thus, the duo’s third full-length, LP3, retains their trademark drippy, slow, synthetic, stoned-to-the-bone vibe—but graced with multiple layers of fresh instrumentation, a newfound warmth shines through. “We were always trying to stretch the limits of what we had,” beatmaker Mast says. “I felt like we didn’t have to struggle to make the sounds themselves interesting. Weird instruments that we didn’t know how to play—it forces you to try new things.”

On their previous two records, a certain Daft Punk–ian sentiment (sans robot-wear) always bubbled to the surface, even though they were very much concerned with utilizing instruments (with computers still pervasive, but relegated more to the back burner). LP3 is a stronger outing, though it’s not necessarily harder or faster— “Mi Viejo” feels light and breezy, with an autoharp fluttering around a tribal-sounding beat, while the short, poppy “Bruleé” bounces along, the sound of a lost island jam coming home. Oddest of all is “Gipsy Threat,” a quick, laser-filled, Wild West–ish getaway ode, one of the strangest compositions to date for these guys—but it works. These days, Ratatat songs seem to tell a complete story (musically, at least), one that’s sometimes linear and sometimes not.

Even with the fresh artillery, though, LP3 presents a common problem for Ratatat: how to reproduce such a racket live. In conversation, Mast and Stroud both stutter around the issue, conveying a rather youthful perplexity as they explain that in the studio, one guy usually plays while the other layers and engineers. But now it’s down to what two guys can create in real time. “A lot of the sounds were just in that house—we can’t just steal all that stuff and take it on tour,” Stroud notes. The Wolf can’t save them now.

Shall Noise Upon – Studio album by Apollo Sunshine

Released August 5, 2008 vinyl and digital download

Genre: Indie Rock

Label: Headless Heroes

Producer: Quentin Stoltzfus

Apollo Sunshine chronology: Apollo Sunshine (2005), Shall Noise Upon (2008)

Shall Noise Upon is the upcoming 2008 album by Apollo Sunshine. It will be released on vinyl and digital download on August 5, 2008. A CD version will follow on September 2.

The record, which went under Mysteries of the Old Soul as a working title, was recorded during the summer of 2007 in the Catskill Mountains, in a “house inhabited by spirits” and located next door to the home of the original Uncle Sam. Announcement of the finishing of the record was first announced on the band’s website, which was quoted for saying:

“The record is done! Much more info on that coming soon.”

A more formal announcement was made on May 29 by Jam Base.com, which officially announced the album’s title Shall Noise Upon and the tracklisting. The album will include Drug Rug, Edan, Viva Viva, and White Flight as guests.

Track listing

1 “Breeze”

2 “Singing to the Earth”

3 “666: The Coming of the New World Government”

4 “Shall Noise Upon”

5 “Brotherhood of Death”

6 “Happiness”

7 “We Are Born When We Die”

8 “The Funky Chamberlain (Who Begot Who)”

9 “Wolf Frog White”

10 “Money”

11 “The Mermaid Angeline”

12 “Green Green Lawns of Outer Space”

13 “Honestly”

14 “Coyote Hearing”

15 “Fog and Shadow”

16 “Light of the World”

Q1 How did you start out making music?

We started recording together about seven years ago. Evan had his laptop studio setup in his tiny bedroom in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and he invited me over to record. We started making a bunch of joke songs together and then finally hit on ‘Seventeen Years’. We had a really simple set up, just a guitar, distortion pedal, one keyboard, and a couple other little things. We didn’t realise we were forming a band together then, we were just making songs for fun.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?

I think the inspiration for making ‘LP3′ came mostly from the environment we were in. We found an amazing studio to record in called Old Soul. It’s an old 1800s style house in Catskill, NY, supposedly next door to where Uncle Sam grew up. It’s filled with a huge range of different instruments, like harpsichords, grand pianos, about twenty different organs, etc. So, coming from small bedrooms in Brooklyn with only a couple instruments to a place like this was a big deal for us. Oh, and every song was written by ghosts.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?

It’s different every time. I guess most of the time we start out with a beat and just play over it until something sounds cool. I think the songs were written much faster this time because we had a broader range of sounds to work with in the early phase of the song. The sounds that we use as we’re starting a new song usually dictate what the theme is and then we just go from there.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?

Chemirani, White Flight, The Kinks, Werner Herzog, John Stamos, The Idle Race, Christopher Lloyd, RyanDan, R Kelly, The Zombies, SonofJerry, too many to mention all of them.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?

You’re a little late. Just kidding, I’d say “it’s cool, we’re cool”.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?

I’m just hoping to tour around the world and see as many new places as possible, and then keep doing that in the future

More: www.myspace.com/ratatatmusic

by Samuel Strang

Whereas most acts get berated for churning out material with the same formula, Brooklyn instrumental duo Ratatat’s return with LP3 and the same hurdy-gurdy waltz they’ve always had avoids such a pitfall, as their material proves as intoxicating as ever.

“Always different, always the same”? Pretty much. After using Björk’s house for the tail end of the recording of second album Classics, Mike Stroud and Evan Mast decided to bunk up and lay down the record at Old Soul Studios, full of dusty Wurlitzers and discarded harpsichords to satisfy their warped musical tendencies. As a result, their new record entangles as many Arabian epilogues as Daft Punk cushioned basslines.

Mast guides us through LP3 and how they’d rather have a sparrow providing vocals than Lil’ Wayne.

- – -

Only taking a few of weeks to record, as opposed to the months that previous albums took to write, would it be fair to say that LP3 was written during something of a glut of inspiration?

Yes that’s a good way to describe it. We rented this studio for 40 days and 40 nights and just got really deep into making music. We made something like 25 songs during that time, start to finish. I’ve never really experienced anything like it before. It felt like we got caught up in a fast moving current. We were like El Niño and LP3 was the Gulf of Mexico.

What do you put this glut down to?

I think a lot of things just crystallised all at once. We had been out touring for about two years, playing shows all over the world. It was a really amazing and inspiring time – to see crowds of people showing up at our shows, in countries we’ve never even been to before. So we’d had all these great experiences and we went into the studio with a very positive feeling. We also found the perfect studio at the perfect time. We were very lucky.

Do you see the record as a continuation of the same themes you picked at on Classics, or a record removed from previous ventures?

It’d been so long since we recorded Classics (released in 2006) I wasn’t really thinking much about those songs. I think LP3 is pretty far removed from that, actually. Of course it’s still me and Mike though, so certain ideas carry over. I think ’Dura’ sounds a bit like Classics – that was the first song we made for LP3, so maybe that was the transitional period.

How important was recording at Old Soul to the broader sound?

Old Soul definitely had a influence on the sound. There’re a lot of great instruments there. We were particularly inspired by the harpsichord. It was just amazing to suddenly have access to this new palette of sounds.

Was it a better environment to record in than Björk’s house?

Björk’s house was amazing in its own way, but when we recorded there we basically just transplanted our home studio into her house. So the environment changed, but the tools were exactly the same as what we’d already been used to. At Old Soul we had a lot of new stuff to play with, so a lot of ideas came out of that.

Ratatat, Classics and LP3: is it fair to say that Ratatat struggle with record titles?

Would you prefer something like Viva La Vida? In Rainbows? Personally, I think we nailed it.

Would you say LP3 is better or worse ‘party record’ compared to previous records?

It’s better for parties than previous records, and I don’t just mean our records. I mean all records.

Can we expect another instalment in your remix series?

We haven’t been working on any hip-hop remixes lately. I’ve been getting really into making videos though, so I’ve had the thought to do a DVD mixtape with videos. There’s a lot to do though. I don’t know if I’ll really find the time for it.

Who do you think has the portfolio to front Ratatat on a full-time basis: Lil’ Wayne or Jay-Z?

Shit, it almost pains me to admit it, but I think I’d go with Wayne at the moment. I only say that because I some of my most favourite albums were made by Jay-Z. I just haven’t been as excited about his recent stuff. If we ever got a vocalist, it’d have to be some kind of bird. Birds have a double set of vocal chords so they can create two tones at once. Their vocal chords are also situated at the bottom of their oesophagus, which gives them much more flexibility than humans, which is why they can create such a broad range of sounds. Human voices are really quite limited.

- – -

You’ve strayed from The Knife to Missy Elliott when remixing. Who is the most absurd person you’ve been asked to meddle beats for?

Fergie.

Going back at bit, but ‘Seventeen Years’ was used to advertise the Hummer H2, whereas ‘Bustelo’ was used to soundtrack the Jaguar driving experience. What ride typifies the Ratatat sound?

We started out on a hang glider. Moved on to a Lambo’. I think now we’re approaching hydrofoil.

There seems a Balkan pomp underpinning LP3. Was there any temptation to go the full hog and leave the synths behind for a focused gypsy sensibility?

I think you can have synthesizers and still have a focused gypsy sensibility. In fact, that is what LP3 aims to prove. If LP3 was an essay that would be its title.

How do you respond to the claim: “Ratatat will be signed by Star Trak as the understudies of The Neptunes”?

I haven’t signed anything yet. We’re negotiating for a bigger advance and a company car.

Finally, for people shelling out for the record, what is the perfect setting to listen to LP3?

Put your head in between the biggest, bassiest speakers you can find, slowly turn the volume knob until it becomes painful, then turn it back slightly or you’ll damage your ears – you’ll need those for LP4. Turn the lights down, if not off. You might want to close your eyes, but you don’t have to. Don’t read anything though. If you need to get up to get a snack or use the restroom, wait for the end of the song, press pause and go do what you have to do. Don’t listen from the other room, the sounds will be muffled. That’s fine for subsequent listenings, but first time listeners should really be focusing here. Listen to the whole record. I know 42 and a half minutes is a lot of time to ask of you, but I think you will find that the songs will reward you for your attention. Most importantly please don’t listen through laptop speakers or the free ear plug headphones that came with your mp3 player. Give it a real go on a proper sound system. Otherwise you’ll be missing out on some important frequencies.

That is science talking. Follow those instructions and you’ll have those bowels back in working order.

LP3 is released on Monday, July 7. Find Ratatat’s website here (MySpace) or catch them at one of these UK dates:

July

23 London Cargo

25 Brighton Audio

26 East Anglia Secret Garden Party

29 Newcastle The End

31 York Duchess

August

1 Edinburgh Cabaret Voltaire

2 Glasgow The Captain’s Nest

Release Date: July 8, 2008

Label: XL Recordings Review By Matthew Blackwell

Prefix Rating 8.5

Description

Everybody’s favorite NYC electrorock duo, Ratatat, is about to get less rock/guitar-oriented than ever for their third album, the imaginatively titled LP3, due July 8 on XL. Perhaps in an effort to keep themselves out of future editions of Guitar Hero, they’ve largely eschewed rock rhythms and relegated the six-string action to a more low-key role than before. The end result recalls the late-’90s melodic electronica of Plone and B. Fleischmann more than anything else, and offers a refreshing alternative to the in-your-face likes of Justice and MSTRKRFT, presenting a kinder, gentler electronic pop sound for the dog days of summer.

~ Jim Allen

On their eponymous debut, the members of Ratatat made their guitars sound like synthesizers, and the resultant electro/hip-hip/rock hybrid made them instant darlings of the blogosphere. They expanded on their sound for 2006′s Classics, which scored them an opening slot for Daft Punk and a subsequent world tour. LP3 marks a further departure from their original method. For this recording, the duo retreated to “Old Soul,” a supposedly haunted house in Catskill, New York, for forty days and forty nights. In addition to its supernatural inhabitants, the studio housed an array of keyboard instruments, from a grand piano to a harpsichord.

Using actual keyboards as a backdrop gives these new tracks room to breathe, and more often than not, the guitars actually sound like guitars. Still, there’s no mistaking this for anything other than Ratatat. Evan Mast’s beats are as twitchy and funky as ever, and Mike Stroud’s melodies would still fit in equally well at a rock show or a dance party. While staying within this distinctive framework, they cover a broader area stylistically than on their previous efforts, due partly to the greater variety of instruments available to them and partly to their increasing compositional skill.

The leap from the constant high-energy rave-up of their debut to the more subtle workings of Classics was impressive enough, but the ability shown here to segue smoothly from dance-oriented tracks (“Shempi”) to more emotional fare (“Black Heroes”) is the mark of a band that is in full control of its sound.

At times, Ratatat are even able to subsume elements of world music into their guitar-keys-drum lineup without sounding like they’re stretching too far. The worldbeat-percussion outro of “Mi Viejo” sounds like a drum circle had traded in their bongos for drum machines. “Mumtaz Khan,” which was reportedly written after an encounter with an Egyptian rug dealer, would be the ideal soundtrack to a party underneath the pyramids. And “Gipsy Threat” shares the same driving Eastern European rhythm that A Hawk and a Hacksaw and Gogol Bordello have recently made popular.

Previously, Ratatat’s live instrumentation kept them at a fair distance from other dance-centric electronic duos. LP3 serves to broaden this gap even further. More often than not, this record sounds like the work of a full band. It is the most realized of their albums to date, and it showcases the group fully exploring the possibilities of the niche that they created for themselves two records ago.

It has been difficult to work out what has changed  but there’s plenty that is new and different on their latest release, LP3.

Down the line from his Brooklyn apartment, band member Evan Mast says the disco-flavoured track Shempi reminds him of ABBA. Mi Viejo sounds like it’s been lifted from the soundtrack to a Mexploitation flick, Flynn has a surprising reggae skank and the creepy Schiller is a cracked music-box instrumental.

For this album, Mast and Mike Stroud moved to an old house in the upstate New York town of Catskill, a studio overseen by a fellow named “The Wolf”.

“It was just this amazing place that we kind of fell in love with instantly,” says Mast of Old Soul Studios, which came decked out with antique instruments such as harpsichord, Mellotron, Wurlitzer organ, a talk box and grand piano.

“It’s out in the country in a really small town with not much going on there at all. You can’t really find a good meal anywhere in Catskill really. We ended up having to cook at home in the studio every night.

“There’s mountains close by that you can drive to. It’s really scenic, a beautiful place, but we ended up staying in the studio the whole time, so we didn’t see a whole lot of the surroundings.”

The album, which is mellower than 2006′s Classics, flits between a feast of styles: disco, Tejano and reggae, as well as pychedelia, hip-hop and their stock baroque virtuosity. Despite the wider palette of sounds, Mast says that after “obsessing” over Classics, it was invigorating to spend just six weeks recording LP3.

“I think this record is much more immediate,” he says. “It was a really intense recording process, completely isolating ourselves in this big house full of instruments, and we just really focused on the music. In the past, we might have an idea for a song, record for a day and then take the next day off to do our laundry or something. “But this time around, we would record each track start to finish in a day or two, so we were able to stay more in tune with the original ideas.”

Ratatat are reaching a wider audience with each album through word of mouth, constant touring and incendiary live gigs (the band thrilled many in Australia in April with the Essential Music Festival). They have done this without proper songs or radio play, and with no interference from their record label (XL Recordings, home of the White Stripes and Radiohead).”I hope it doesn’t sound arrogant of me to say, but I do think what we’re doing is different than what any other band is doing right now,” says Mast modestly. “And that’s what keeps it exciting for us. I think what inspires us and what we’re excited about is what no one’s ever done before, so that’s what we’re always looking to do.”

LP3 is released through Remote Control Records on July 5.

June 25th, 2008

Super-hip New York duo Ratatat left the confines of Gotham’s minimalist electro glam for the wilds of the Catskills on their third album  LP3. It emerged as a neo-colonial traipse, coloured by tribal rhythms and quaint harpsichord, in an eternal effort to keep things interesting for the pastiche producer Evan Mast.

Was there a plan or did you just head up to the Catskills with a bunch of toys to see what you came up with?

It was a little bit of both. The idea was definitely to be around a lot of instruments that were new to us because that’s how we get excited about new sounds. It’s fun to have an instrument that you have no idea how to play because it challenges you, and you end up getting sounds that you never expected. We’ve been making songs for so many years with one keyboard and one guitar there’s only so much you can do. When you open up the possibilities and you have access to different things, something as simple as a nice piano sound is exciting.

You weren’t worried that you were playing these things incorrectly?

Probably. There was this Iranian drum called the zarb which is incredibly difficult to play. We were playing tablas too and we had no idea. But you end up getting interesting sounds out of them.

So the instruments are the only reason there’s a real rhythmic, world music feel to  LP3?

That’s part of it. We were also listening to music from different parts of the world. Just before we went to record I was working with my friend Justin [Roelofs of White Flight] and he put us on to a bunch of cool records, some with the zarb, and Indian percussion records.  It was something we were getting into right around the time we went into the studio and it found its way into the songs.

It was almost accidental?

Around the time we recorded [2006's] Classics I was getting really into hip hop production and the beats on the record were more hip hop style; heavy kicks and snares, and I didn’t get too crazy with the foreign percussion on that one. But you can’t keep making the same kind of beats for very long.

Does this mean you’re getting better at this whole songwriting gambit?

I hope so! I feel like we’ve ironed some of the kinks out. [Guitarist] Mike [Stroud] and I work very differently. I would get caught up in the chords and notes and make sure everything syncs together and there weren’t any bad notes and weird rhythms. I’d get frustrated because I don’t have a background in theory or anything and that part of it is really challenging to me. This time I guess I’m more comfortable with that and it lets me do more complicated stuff without getting bogged down in the technical side of things.

Is Mike comfortable with the fact that there’s less guitar noodling on this one?

Yeah. I guess that there were more keyboards around to play with. Our stuff in the past has been super guitar-heavy and this was just another way for us to keep interested.

How do you feel about people using your stuff as background music?

(Laughs) I don’t think that’s the ideal way to listen to it. There are a lot of people who aren’t willing to give it a chance because it’s instrumental. I think people who say that would say that about any instrumental record, who’d put it on in the background and not really get into it. I dunno. That’s fine. But if you pay attention I think there’s more than enough going on to make up for some singer singing some lame lyrics over the top of it.

Also, looking back at your album titles (self-titled, Classics,  LP3), you don’t really want to be bothered writing lyrics, do you?

(Laughs) No, not really. Most of the songs titles are jokes or free-association. Occasionally there’s a story behind it but not often. The song ‘Mi Viejo’ was named after a song by this Argentine singer that I really like but that’s the only one that has a story behind it.

By now you’ve got so many famous friends that you could feasibly get ring-in vocalists…

That sounds horrible. I’m not really interested in working with vocalists, especially not on a Ratatat record. I don’t hate music with words but I’m really picky about lyrics. There are very few lyrics that I can stomach. For Ratatat records, we’re not going to bring vocals in anytime soon.

Andrew Tijs

By Dennis Cook

Curioser and curioser. Opening out like a celestial telescope and retracting into spaces of cavernous privacy and pecking glossolalia, Larkin Grimm isn’t your typical girly singer-songwriter. The child of hippies once part of the Holy Order of MANS and a rambler that prefers to sleep outdoors in the warm months, Larkin joins the other inspired iconoclasts on Michal Gira’s Young God Records (Akron/Family, Fire On Fire, Devendra Banhart, The Angels of Light). Swinging between plush furred purrs and tangy trippiness, Grimm’s Parplar (arriving October 28) is a remarkable introduction to remarkable new talent.

Shoehorned with inspired fingerpicking and Grimm’s crazily elastic voice, Parplar contains an almost willful diversity, shrieks and experiments dueling with bed-sit intimates worthy of the great ladies of the canyon. While Grimm has been making music for a few years – both as a member of Dirty Projectors and her own free-form improvisations – this set crystallizes her talents and vision, which can be a little scattershot over the course of 40 minutes but remains ever fascinating and often downright intoxicating. Opener “They Were Wrong” is the slow curling smile that draws you in, a today child of a sound birthed by Bridget St. John and Vashti Bunyan. But, very much to Grimm’s credit, she doesn’t remain in what could be an easy sell to “freak folk” fans. The next track, “Ride That Cyclone,” is a stormy bit of gypsy cowpoke ecstatic worship, followed by “Blond And Golden Johns,” an undulating bit of prickly sensuality that juicily announces, “This mouth has wrapped around some things/ more delicious than the songs I sing.” In lesser hands this would be trite titillation but Grimm is a provocateur in the dictionary sense – stirring things up with purpose, an agitator of the first order.

She keeps this hard changing bounce going for another dozen cuts, and each is fascinating in its own way, distant murmurs of Jane Siberry, Meredith Monk, Kate Bush, Sheila Chandra and other Ur mamas. Taken as a whole, her imagination is a little exhausting, most of us mere mortals not cut out for such onrushing creativity. But, it’s us that need to do the adjusting because there’s not a thing wrong with Larkin Grimm, who offers enzyme to our own sonic evolution. Let us hope she finds a happy catalyst stirring as she progresses on her merry way.

Here’s Grimm live this past May doing perhaps this album’s most charming strange track, “Be My Host.”

Larkin Grimm Parplar (Young God Records)

Just recounting the brief synopsis of Larkin Grimm’s life—that she grew up in a cult until the age of six, then spent the rest of her childhood in the Appalachians, frequently sleeps outdoors, has no permanent address and went to Yale art school on a full scholarship—would probably make you want to check out her music. But even that strange collision of events doesn’t begin to compare to the utter bizarreness of her latest record Parplar.

It is a mishmash of styles and ideas, and a collection of captivating stories. It will most certainly be lumped in the freak-folk category, but Ms. Grimm is in a class all her own.

Her voice, at times possessed, at other times soothing as a grandma’s, is chameleonic and well suited for her theatrical urges. With it, she convincingly portrays a wide array of characters and feelings, from the humorous and promiscuous lass of “Blond and Golden Johns” to the mournful singer of “They Were Wrong”.

Instrumentation on the album varies from guitar to dulcimer to some electronic treatments. And with equally wide variety of ideas and themes, there is something on this album for everyone.

The only problem, however, is that some songs seem more developed and fleshed out than others. Some seem perfectly produced while others seem rushed or even unfinished. It’s almost like you’re looking into Ms. Grimm’s journal or sketchbook. But again, that could be appealing to some. But overall, Parplar is a fast-paced record with plenty of numbers that get in and get out of your life just quickly enough to leave you wanting more. –Guy Gray

Published by laurent the laurent on June 7, 2008 in Artist Reviews

When Ratatat blew into the music scene a few years back, many (including myself) were simply in awe of their dynamic synth guitar arena club power beats.  Classics was an instant classic.  Then Ratatat dazzled further with a slew of remixes (my favorite being The Knife’s We Share Our Mother’s Health).  After extensive touring (including a stint with Daft Punk), what was next?  LP3.  Where do they go from Classics?  Everywhere.  Beautiful.  Ratatat went deep within themselves for this album, putting together rich layers of nature. world beat, and club, slightly shying away from their trademark synth-guitar sound.  LP3 is like a dense fog rolling in at the foot of a mountain range, waiting as the sun burns everything into view (it was recorded at Old Soul in the small town of Catskill in upstate New York).   Simply put…beautiful.  It’s out on July 8th from XL Recordings.  This is a must have.  They will also be touring…check the dates after the jump.

New album: Ratatat follow Classics with Old Soul on LP3

by Kev Kharas

Posted: 14 May ’08, 15:02

Ratatat will release their third album this summer.

The follow-up to 2006’s Classics longplayer is called LP3 and is out on the 7th of July.

How does it differ from its predecessor? Well, where Classics was, as its portentous name might suggest, recorded over a period of months LP3 was done and in the can in weeks. It also leans more towards keys than guitars, live percussion rather than the programmed beat.

This results from time spent at Old Soul Studios in upstate New York, where a dearth of hi-tech recording gear is matched by a proliferation of mellotrons and Wurlitzers, grand pianos and harpsichords; ye olde weapons of noisemakers reinvigorated by the Brooklyn duo.

And what’s this? A series of remixes? Including the first one Animal Collective have ever done under their own names? Awesome:

‘Shiller’

‘Falcon Jab’

‘Mi Viejo’

‘Mirando’

‘Flynn’

‘Bird Priest’

‘Shempi’

‘Imperials’

‘Dura’

‘Brulee’

‘Mumtaz Khan’

‘Gipsy Threat’

‘Black Heroes’

Animal Collective reworked ‘Mirando’ if you’re wondering, into a “10 minute techno wonder,” while YACHT, Zongamin, Copy and E*Rock have all also been on the remix.

by John Dyer

Once Upon a time….err…..um… About 3 years ago I moved from Cedar Grove, North Carolina to Brooklyn, New York. I used to frequent the “old” Living Room (in Manhattan), a shoe-box-sized spot on the corner of Stanton & Allen, to listen to music & see what was happening. It was always good & there was no cover. I happened to be there one night when Blubbery (aka Gwen – a friend form TX) was playing. On bass was this guy Kenny Siegal who I recognized. I had met him & seen his group Johnny Society play in North Carolina & had heard about Kenny’ s work with other artists at his studio upstate. I also remembered digging/ being very impressed by Johnny Society when I first heard them down south.

Here I am in NY, thinking about cutting some new demos/ laying down some tracks.

After Blueberry’s set Kenny walks by. I grab his arm & reintroduce myself. I mention that I’d like to do some recording & ask if he’d be interested in helping – maybe at his studio upstate. He tells me to send him some of my songs to check out. I’d come to find that Kenny is someone who picks his projects/ collaborations very carefully.

So, over the course of the next few weeks, I send him like 4 or 5 90 minute demo tapes. He likes a lot of the songs, thinks I have a great voice & says he’d like to produce a record with me.

We begin song selection for the record & a few of the songs he picks (Hunyacutusup/ Golden Elise Gardening) happen to be from a body of material that i’d tried unsuccessfully to lay down in North Carolina. So i said well – those songs go with the other songs in that body of (Phantom Fire) songs & if we’re gonna record ANY of them then we should do ALL of them – which is a different record. Kenny says – lets make the record that we set out to make. So i tried to split the difference & throw down the Phantom songs quickly – solo & acoustic – as i had down in NC – and get them out of the way – so to speak. Then he jumps on one & puts some cool overdubs on “Upon These Swords” & all of the sudden it’s a whole new ball game. The lid had been thrown off. So the two of us lean into it & between July & Nov. of 2002 we lay down Phantom Fire http://www.cdbaby.com/dyer2. – recorded & mixed at “Old Soul” & mastered by Fred Kevorkian back down in the big city (aka the Big Kitty).

Twelve hours after that mastering session we begin work on the record that we’d initially set out to make. We’d agreed to use Kenny’s A team – so to speak – for this one – so it’s gonna be me on voice, guitar & harmonica with Kenny on bass & Johnny Society’s Brian Geltner on drums & percussion. Having narrowed our list & selected the songs we spend a few days in Brian’s little apartment in D.U.M.B.O (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass – in Brooklyn) rehearsing & working up arrangements.

On November 24th 2002 – we head upstate to Catskill, New York & convene at Old Soul. It’s a big brick house. There’s snow on the ground. Working with Johnny Society’s long time friend & engineer Tom Schick (aka Little Tity) we lay down basic tracks (over the next four days) for the new record.

We all split.

From Dec 4 to Jan 20 I split my time listening to rough mixes at home in Brooklyn & traveling up & down the Hudson River by train – to & from Old Soul where Kenny (aka Shoe) & I (aka Bill/ Little Rocky Balboa) overdub / further shape / flesh out the basic tracks with guitars, keyboards, bells, & whistles. Old Soul is a historic house filled with beautiful instruments. We even put a mellotron (think Alfred Hitchcock or the intro to the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields”) on one tune -” Nick (Song for Nick Drake)”. Old Soul is also haunted – & that’s where Bill comes in – but that’s another story. I’ll tell you that one over a bowl of marshmallows someday. So up & down the Hudson I go… & the recording grows & grows.

Other musical guests include Lily & Wren (aka “the girls”) singing heavenly backing vocals on the opening “Airtime” & two fabulous horn players – Jeff Hermanson (trumpet) & Alan Ferber (trombone & bass trombone) on “Moving Fast”, “Shybreeze”, “Surely It’ll Shine Through”, & “Hot Owl.”

Then Shoe, Little Tity, & Little Rocky Balboa reconvene at Old Soul to mix / listen/ remix – over a handful of days.

We all split. Back down the Hudson….

We need a remix or two. Back up the Hudson.

We remix. Is that mix better or is this one ? We split. Back down the Hudson.

I wrestle with the sequence…..wrestle……tweek…….wrestle……(3 bells: !!!)

Then, to top it all off we get it mastered back in the Big Kity at Sterling Sound by a one Mr. Greg Calbi. Greg has worked with some of my favorite artists on some of my favorite recordings ever – Paul Simon’s Graceland, REM’s Murmur, Television’s Marquee Moon, numerous Talking Heads & David Byrne records, Patti Smith, John Lennon, & on & on. He recently remastered the Bob Dylan catalogue. Bob who ? I’m thinking “yeah – ok – that’ll work – whatever – I guess this guy’ll do” (read: quietly beaming). Greg was totally cool…down to earth…enthusiastic & generous.

THEN i made a new painting – just for the cover. I drew & I painted & I drew & I painted & I drew & I scraped & I painted & I sanded & I looked & I drew & I painted & I sanded & I drew.

THEN the new image was photographed by Michael Bodycomb – a totally big time pro rootin’ -tootin’ -art-shootin’ New-Tex-Yorkan dude.

THEN i worked with my friend & designer Jeff Breazeale- who’s Matchbox Studio did the beautiful design work.

THEN i had the whole shebang duplicated at Disk Makers….who screwed up the print job TWICE & then got it right (third time’s a charm).

THEN i said good day to the UPS guy, signed off & carried ‘em all up the stairs….shipped some copies off to Cd Baby….. & so….after some 2 (+) years in the making…..

* GOSTAYPLAY *

All I can say is – if you like my music at all you’ll love this one. We had a great time & a great team working together on it & I’m really proud of it. It’s been a long haul & great effort. I hope that it’ll find a little spot in your world. With all the “laying down” that went on – the only thing left is for you to pick it up (if you havent already)…and enjoy !

JOHN DYER <> GOSTAYPLAY

Airtime

Moving Fast

Nick (Song for Nick Drake)

Shybreeze

Ocean of You

Surely It’ll Shine Through

Two Can Play Too

Center to Hold

Hot Owl

Accord

Gostayplay

available now @ http://www.cdbaby.com/dyer3

Cheers & Thanks, John (Brooklyn, NY Oct 2005)