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SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Liars
Liars at Daytrotter
SXSW, 2010
Three days of sitting in on sessions, and I’m getting way too comfortable on this couch, while the world outside is actively running around trying to fit it all in. It’s a dichotomy, the chaos out there verses SXSW from this tranquil, insider’s perspective, but it’s all geared around the same common goal: Getting as much out of this experience as possible.
But what’s happening right in the studio right now is what I need to really wake up. The Liars sound merciless. “How can they be safe!” yells singer Angus Andrew. The engineers are talking about an AC 15 mic that needs to be checked. I don’t really know what that means, but eventually both band and engineer decide the tape is ready to roll.
This stuff sounds animalistic to me right now. Raw and rowdy. I saw too many light pop bands yesterday, and I realize this is exactly what I’m in the mood for. “We surfed at Malibu” Andrew yowls, with a full onslaught of racket behind him. His pitch going up and up as he screams “hey hey HEY HEY!”
SXSW Thursday Night: Holy Fuck, Pattern is Movement, and the xx
Holy Fuck, Pattern is Movement, and the xx
Mohawk in Austin, SXSW
It’s Friday morning and everyone is hungover. The sun has yet to break through the clouds and it’s still chilly so the coffee is currently warming us up instead of the Austin heat. The Depreciation Guild just finished a session (yep, they start early around these parts) and Liars are up next, and while we wait, people are swapping stories about what they did last night. For myself, after having left the studio, I made it over to Mohawk, one of the best venues in the city, with great booking and consistent sound, and caught the end of a set by new Secretly Canadian signee, jj. Holy Fuck, who are set to put out a new album this May, was the big draw and they nailed a ferocious set. They play live electronica that sits on the cusp of electro-punk, pioneering new ways of mixing genres; techo beats will suddenly part for guitar power chords to break open the middle of a song, and then a swirling wall of shoegaze sets in at one layer. But it’s always underscored by hard driving rhythms. At any given moment, your ears can unveil new parts and fixations in their music. Literally one of the best sets I’ve seen in months.
The GZA performed next on that stage, and he did a lot of Wu-Tang stuff, which is fun and all, but hip-hop doesn’t work so well live because you can’t make out the vocals. So I went over to the other room to see Pattern is Movement, and boy, am I glad I made the move. I’d never seen them live before. The duo pushes the boundaries of contemporary jazz but also execute math rock in a way that is rarely so compelling. Talented folks, these two.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Real Estate
Real Estate at Daytrotter
SXSW, 2010
Real Estate just put out a record that I love, late last fall, so I was excited when I realized I’d be able to sit in on their session tonight. It’s getting late outside, night is falling and the lanterns strewn on cables are starting to shine. It is literally the perfect backdrop for Real Estate’s cool, ambient pop. Dreamy but conscious and subversively psychedelic, Real Estate invokes autumnal breezes and cerulean blue skies (I swear, that’s the color I see what I hear their music). The first track they play, which they tell us is still “Untitled”—making me feel like I’m in on something good, which I am—naturally leads way into the next song, another somnambulant number. This one uses dual guitars and pedals to glide their chords together, which causes me to ask Phil, one of the guys who runs Daytrotter and who is in here sitting next to me, if that’s a keyboard they are using.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Wave Machines
Wave Machines at Daytrotter
SXSW 2010
After the lightness of the last session, Admiral Radley, the funkier, more rockin’ sound of Wave Machines is welcomed, especially as the afternoon is slipping away. The energy outside is both simultaneously starting to wan—as many of us have been up early and wilting in the sun all day—and just getting going—as the beers are kicking in and nightfall is but a few hours away.
One of the guys in the band, James, asks for his vocals to be turned down in the mix. They are British and I’m more focused on their accents than anything else at this particular moment… When you’re trying to absorb start-and-stop sessions without seeing any of the band, who are behind the walls while I’m taking it in through the soundboard, those are the sorts of details you start to fixate on. Wave Machines has a sound guy on tour with them, and he’s proving to be immensely helpful as they prepare the perfect mix. The first song the band plays is synthy, vaguely reminiscent of Wild Beasts, but not quite so glam rock, a little bit more retro new wave. “Iko Iko”s are sprinkled throughout. It sounds pretty good, but the band decides to lay another version over top of that one, to really nail it to their specifications.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: The Scene on Thursday Afternoon
Hey, check out the scene at the Daytrotter studio, late Thursday afternoon.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Admiral Radley (Grandaddy and Earlimart)
Admiral Radley at Daytrotter
Austin, SXSW 2010
Yesterday, when I arrived here at the Daytrotter studio in Austin, my intentions were to give you “fly on the wall” type reporting on what the happenings are from the control room during sessions (or perhaps when it calls for it, from the lounge area outside—where the mingling takes place and the handshakes are given, where we say that we’re attempting to hydrate but are collectively going for the PBRs instead). I want you to get a sense of being here in the room with the engineers, taking in the banter between the band members next door with their respective headphones on, catching the songs come through on the two-track tape to be added to Daytrotter’s already impressive catalog.
Next door, on the other side of the wall, Admiral Radley just started their session. Admiral Radley is a new project by members of Grandaddy (Jason Lytle and Aaron Burtch) and Earlimart (Aaron Espinoza and cutie Ariana Murray). Lytle and the engineer are working on getting the appropriate vocal levels. Lytle sounds great. “California” he’s singing in a falsetto, “I heart California.” I love Just Like the Fambly Cat, and while he produced a considerable amount of music before that 2006 Grandaddy album was released, it’s still the one that comes right to mind when I think about him. I figure he must have a great sense of humor.
Now it’s Murray’s turn to check her vocals, and she’s saying something silly, and everyone’s laughing.
After a few false starts, trials and errors, the taping commences, and each song is sweet, but not too saccharine, earthy and pretty instead. Admiral Radley has a soft sound, with light rhythm and vocals. Lytle and Murray play off each other, rarely getting too rollicking or rockin’, always retaining their poppy accessibility, much like you’d expect from this collaboration. Lytle identifies one track as “Ghosts of Syllables” and it turns out to be a charming, keyboard-driven number, the type of song that enables you to find a semblance of serenity during the madness that is SXSW.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Jakob Dylan and Neko Case
Jakob Dylan with Neko Case at Daytrotter
Austin, SXSW 2010
Light banter and familiar chatter among the room full of musicians sets the tone for what turns out to be a striking session by Neko Case and Jakob Dylan (yes, son of Bob, as if you didn’t know that). Dylan’s voice kicks in with, “Nothing like the whole wide world for us” and Case’s greets his, taking the song to harmonious heights, his voice raspy and familiarly American, Case’s twangy and honeyed, but with a bite. Through the walls of the control room, “striking” is the word that first comes to my mind. This song swings slowly, fitting in perfectly with the expansive Texas landscape outside and the casual vibe of the studio itself.
Jakob Dylan has a new record coming out in April titled Women and Country, and that first song, “Nothing But the Whole Wide World”, is the leading track off the album. Dylan’s been off my own personal radar for a while now, but hearing his voice being put down on tape like this makes me want to dig up the story of his last few years. (A quick search reveals that post-Wallflowers’ last record in 2005 he released a solo album in ’08 called Seeing Things.) Case, of course, scored big with her last record, the critically acclaimed Middle Cyclone, and together they bring a moody mix of country and Americana soul to the reel like few collaborative efforts are able to achieve.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: ARMS
ARMS at Daytrotter
Austin, SXSW 2010
ARMS, from Brooklyn, are doing their session in the room next door, while I sit in the control room with the engineer and a few others. Right now, they’re laying a melodic guitar line over a steady bass beat, noodling over that line, and then opening up like a flower. The sound cuts out and they lose the mix in the control room, so they are starting the next song again, sprinkling over their rhythm section a propensity to tastefully jam, flavoring the steady beat with a nearly whimsical pop melody.
Now the tape is rolling for real to capture this one for posterity, and the levels are all equaled out here in the control room. Todd Goldstein, who used to be be with Harlem Shakes before they disbanded in 2009 and whose vocals right now sound sorta like Ben Gibbard’s on this song, sings earnestly, and beautifully. “That was ‘Emily Sue Pt Two’” he says, once the track is over, collaborating with the engineer and deciding that’s a take.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter
On the east side of Austin, past the train tracks and a scattering of mom and pop restaurants and art studios, sits a inconspicuous opening to a dusty area adorned with hay bale seating, strewn red metal lanterns, coolers of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and blanket throws. It’d be easy to think this is some college students’ backyard, until you see the black and yellow Daytrotter banner hung high across one of the wooden sides of the shed and catch site of the concrete, low-ceilinged recording studio just beyond.
It is here where Daytrotter has, for the past four years, set up shop for the week of SXSW to enlist bands and artists, both bright and burgeoning, to record exclusive studio session for free download through their website. Daytrotter, which many of you are probably already familiar, is a website and recording studio based in Rock Island, Illinois, where a handful of studio engineers and tastemakers capture sessions from bands touring through the States, making a special stop to this special place in the Midwest to add to the site’s already immense catalog. Bands from Beach House to Shearwater to Kris Kristofferson to Spoon have recorded within their walls. Daytrotter’s presence here in Austin fits in seamlessly with the festival, as a flurry of artists hit Sixth Street and then permeate beyond the borders of the chaos to make their way to Daytrotter’s SXSW satellite location, where they can put their feet up, sip on cold PBR, and record a handful of songs of their choosing to join the multitude of artists that’ve already done the same.
SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Band of Horses
by: Angela Zimmerman
After sitting in on soundcheck with an assortment of other people, the biggest group to observe a session so far this week, Band of Horses decide that recording under such a spectacle of eyes and expectations will not be conducive to the capture. So we are kindly asked, all of us, to leave the studio while they finish up. So since I can’t report from inside the control room this time, I’ve posted a video above so you can listen to one of my fave Band of Horses tracks. Enjoy!
by: Angela Zimmerman
published: March 19, 2010
in column: Uncategorized
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