The Null Device Blog

Friday night was the late-night, barely-controlled chaos that was a Caustic show.  I mention that merely because I was rocking the theremin and some keys for that gig.  I also mention that because it meant I didn’t get home to sleep until well after 2am.

Ordinarily, a Friday night gig would just mean “sleep late on Saturday.”  This however was not an option, because bright and chipper on Saturday morning I had a carnatic classical trio coming by to record.  It was an unusual configuration, too – saxophone, mridangang, violin, and the omnipresent electronic tampura/sruthi box.  (I offered to delve into my surprisingly vast library of tampura samples, but they opted to pass.

Over the course of two days, we recorded well over two hours of music.   They played as an ensemble, which meant I had to be diligent with my microphone choices and positioning.  Also, because there were six inputs and my ULN2 only has,  well, 2, I had to do some fancy routing and device aggregation in order to get everything set up and sounding good.  These guys had to play as an ensemble, so I couldn’t simply isolate and multitrack them as I do with my own stuff.

These guys came in from parts distant – the sax player was from north Chicago, the violinist from west Chicago, and the mridangam player was from Washington DC.  I was referred to them as someone who could record carnatic music for a reasonable price and not screw it up, I guess, but I had to keep asking in slight disbelief “uh, you guys know that this is just a room in my basement, right?”  I can see people coming from, say, Milwaukee to record in my basement, but Chicago?  DC?  They apparently were fully aware of this and wanted to go ahead anyway.  It could be my remarkably affordable prices.

What follows is a technical description of what went down, merely because I lack the appropriate music theory to describe what happened musically.

I slaved my old trusty MOTU 828 to the ULN2’s clock, which significantly improved the performance of that box.  I also attached by dbx tube pre to the ULN’s SPDIF and clock-sync’ed that too.

The mrid got a pair of 57’s, run into the 828.  57’s are always reliable of percussion instruments.  They were perhaps a little dark and dense on the treble head of the drum, but they still got me a reasonably decent fidelity on the attack/decay range.  And because they have such a forward pattern with good side rejection, I didn’t get much crosstalk between the two mics, or from the other instruments.

The sax got the Oktava.  Sumanth had specifically requested a rather dark sound on his sax, so the combo of the Oktava and the dbx tube pre was a natural fit.  It was pretty warm and punchy by the time it was all recorded.  The mic was a little gainy, so I did get some “room sound” off the mridangang too, but that was to be expected.  If I’d had a good ribbon mic, that probably also would’ve worked really well.

The violin was the toughy – seeing as it’s a much quieter instrument than a saxophone or a drum, and full of all sorts of crazy harmonics, I had to be pretty careful where I put the mics.  I used the pair of Pulsar II SDC’s that I keep around for just such things.  Since I happen to have a violin, I did some experiments with configuration, and skipped doing my initial x/y stereo placement in favor of an almost guitar-like arrangement – one mic pointing at the f-holes, and the other aimed towards the neck.  The biggest challenge was keeping the mics far enough from the violinist so he could actually play, but close enough that they would get good signal and not pick up every stray noise in the room.    I ended up with a bit of a compromise – I got strong signal but still got some spillover from the sax.  There’s only so much I can do about that, short of throwing up some gobos – but then the instrumentalists wouldn’t be able to see and hear each other, which defeats the purpose.  I ran the mics into the ULN so I could up the gain pretty high without too much noise.

Some of these pieces ran upwards of 20 minutes, one coming in close to an hour, which meant to fix things there was a lot of punch-in/punch out and clever crossfading between takes.  They specifically requested a spacious sound, so I’m judiciously adjusting the panning and reverb settings to get it nice and concert-hall-y without being swamped by deep ‘verb.  I’ve still got some more engineering to do on this yet, but it’s sounding pretty good so far.  These guys were pretty serious players, so that helped an awful lot.

I also learned once again that curious kittens often hamper the recording process by headbutting microphones or deciding to get chummy with  the percussionist in the middle of a take.

I saw the documentary “it Might Get Loud” this weekend.

Interesting film.  It’s quickly very clear why those particular three guitarists (Jimmy Page, The Edge, Jack White) were picked – they each represent a different era of guitar heroics, and they’re also the kind of guitarists who are known for their sound as much as any guitar heroics.  As much as there are many super-shredders out there who could outplay all three of them, probably only EVH would have the appropriate amount of crossover appeal.

It’s also clear what these guys did, in terms of their places in their respective bands – Page was a consummate Musician, joining bands after long stints as a studio musician and arranger; The Edge was a hardcore technician and sonic architect, showing up with a guitar and 4 giant racks of effects gear; Jack White was…well, Jack White’s a douchebag.

Okay, maybe that’s not entirely fair.  He has a very distinctive sound and manner of playing, and he’s probably the one of the three who’s got the closest ties to old blues, so there’s that, and he’s  admittedly a reasonably iconic axeman.  But he was also the only one with a lot of conceits – he had his special outfits, he had a sidekick of “12-year-old Jack White” which was a mini-me version of him, and he was busy showing off his playing in some tumbledown old Tennessee house as though he were some backcountry bluesman, and not the $37M-valued rockstar he actually is.  While Page and Edge were pretty frank about what they did and how they did it, Jack White spent about as much time espousing his personal philosophy about vintage gear, recording a song on a battered old plywood guitar into an ancient reel-to-reel (I noted that he  *was* using a like-new $3000 Coles ribbon mic).  He was frankly pretty annoying.

The Edge was, to me, fascinating.  He was pretty spare with words, but he was also surprisingly humble.  He fully acknowledges he’s not an incredible player, but he also displayed almost boyish glee showing off his electronics gear and effects processors.   It was also interesting to see that a good portion of his “U2 sound” was in the way he voiced his chords.

I’ve never been a big Zeppelin fan, although I acknowledge their impact on the development of rock and roll.   And Page was a capital-M musician.  He certainly makes playing look effortless.  His callbacks to those heady, experimental days of the late 60’s when Zep recorded in manor house stairwells with cables running out to a mobile truck were fascinating.  It was also interesting to note his early career – as a kid in a skiffle band, then as a fill-in session musician, then a regularly gigging studio aguitarist doing everything from rock songs to muzak before he finally got fed up and joined the Yardbirds.  He also seems to be the godfather of Rock Face.  Most intriguingly he said he wept while watching Spinal Tap – not because he didn’t think it was funny, but because he said it was hardly parody, accurately portraying the ridiculous excesses of the 70’s rock band.

A lot of the actual music in the film was surprisingly sub-standard.  You’d think that three iconic players in one room jamming would lead to some crazy sessions, but it was really just three dudes sitting on couches halfheartedly strumming their way through the Led Zeppelin backcatalogue, each with a wildly different guitar tone clashing with the other two.   The exception was when Page played something by himself, and it was obvious that neither the Edge nor White could really conceal their joy at watching Jimmy Freakin’ Page cruise through a legendary rock song.

Overall, from a music-nerd standpoint, it was a fascinating film.  Other than U2 I can’t say I’m a big fan of the artists involved, but they did represent three very distinct points of view and approaches to musicmaking.  Also, the “early years” footage of each of the bands in question was often hilarious.  A big-haired, macho-rocking embryonic U2 from the early early 80’s was hysterical, and a 14-year-old Jimmy Page playing “Momma Don’t Allow No Skiffle” on British TV was rather cute.  Footage of the White Stripes obviously doesn’t go back as far, although what was most interesting was how much Meg White’s drumming has improved in the intervening decade.

Sadly, during the film, it never really did get loud.   It did get interesting.

“Recursions” has been out for a month now and I’ve been tracking it with much interest.  For me, it’s not merely a release, it’s part of a continuing experiment in distribution models.

We did “Footfalls” as a giveaway, to see if it would boost album sales for “Sublimation.”  It did, kinda.  We did something similar for “London” and it too gave AMDM a little bump – helped probably by the fact that this time we got the label on board to help out.  We also printed a number of CD versions of it to sell at shows, and those, surprisingly sold out quickly.

When we conceptualized “Recursions”, we decided to take the idea to its logical conclusion – this wasn’t going to be just another “hey download some free tracks from the internet!”, we were going to treat this like a full release.  That is to say, full distribution channels, available downloads, tracking, etc.

In terms of both marketing and money, it’s been our most successful release to date.  It hasn’t sold as many copies as, say, Sublimation, but unlike our other releases it’s completely recouped production costs, making a small profit even, given us a mess of contacts for promotion and “fan relationship” building, and the bulk of promo has been entirely word of mouth.

Production costs were kept low, mainly due to the fact that we didn’t produce a large run of CDs.  We had 100 run up at a cost of roughly $130.    Okay, sure, costs would’ve been higher if I didn’t happen to have a small mastering business that I could just use for my own purposes, but still, the upshot is we DIY’ed the whole thing.  I cut costs here and there – bartering, begging, promising beer to people.  I probably could’ve spent another $100 if I had to shell out retail prices for things like UPC codes.

Next step was to throw this all on bandcamp.com.  I really, really like this service.  It’s incredibly flexible and consumer-oriented, and I really want them to thrive.  They’ve really hit upon something good for a distribution model – give the consumer the formats they want, while giving the artist the ability to control how things are distributed and what information is collected.  Using their system, we gave away Recursions with an optional “enter your own price” field.  Not only did people enter their own price, but they were awfully generous about it.  I expected maybe a few people to throw a buck at it here or there – instead, an awful lot of downloaders spent $5-$10 (usually, the people who downloaded the high-quality FLAC or AL versions gave more).    Better yet, we collected a lot of email addresses – people willingly signing up to our mailing list in exchange for downloading, meaning the next time we have a show or a release, we’ve got a significant number of new people to tell about it.

We spent another $35 to use TuneCore to put the album on Amazon, eMusic, iTunes, and elsewhere.  I know, why bother when it’s free?  Well, to see if people who don’t go to bandcamp.com find it and buy it anyway.  Or to see if people who love the iTunes interface – I’ve heard they exist – buy it.  The more places it is, the easier it’s to find.   This should hit those stores in a few weeks yet.

All told, so far, this release has managed to make a small profit.  Barely enough to, say, buy a hearty breakfast after a show, but still, this is an accomplishment that in over 10 years of writing and releasing music, hasn’t really happened before.  Certainly not within a month of release, anyway (I *think* Sublimation may have finally sold out its first run.  I haven’t seen sales figures on that in a few years).

The upshot is that DIY releases can work.  Maybe not well enough to make a living on, but certainly well enough that they can pay for themselves.  This isn’t news for some people, but for a band like ours, with a low profile and lower album sales, this is a Big Deal.

Stripmall Architecture – We Were Flying Kites
It’s hard for me to be objective about this release, since I liked the projects of the Cosebooms enough to solicit a remix from them.  Ryan Coseboom could probably record Rebecca singing over radio static and I’d probably give it a rave review.   (Actually, that could be kind of cool, come to think of it).

That said, I’d like to say that this is a pretty fantastic release.  It alternates between extremely delicate micro-programmed electronics, lush soundscapes, and fuzzed-out guitar pop with almost dizzying frequency, as though My Bloody Valentine were trying to make a Dntel album.  The whole thing is anchored by Rebecca Coseboom’s voice,  a dreamy soprano.  The surprising thing is how well it cuts through the mix and drives the melodies – the tendency for most artists of this stripe is to use vocals like this as a texture, burying them amongst all the noises and effects, but they come through clear here.

The other surprising thing is that there seems to be no shortage of hooks, something again rare in the genres of music that this album overlaps.  Tracks like “Stop Thief” and “What’s Wrong With The Kids Today” are surprisingly driving shoegazy-rock songs with very well-defined melodic hooks.

I still don’t know what a “Minnesota smile” is, though.

Claire Voyant – Lustre

Keeping with the theme of dreamy pop from the west coast, Claire Voyant returns after a too-long absence with what is frankly a phenomenal album.  It’s both reminiscent of 80’s 4AD dreampop (This Mortal Coil springs to mind, particularly on tracks like “Mercurial”) but yet full of modern production sheen and electronic textures.  Victoria’s voice, however, doesn’t fall into the same kind of “ethereal” mold that often defines such music – she has a stronger vibrato and more raw power than say, a Liz Fraser.

I do have trouble getting away from the 4AD comparisons, because for a solid chunk of the album I could swear Watts-Russell and Fryer are behind the mixing board.   Lest anyone think this is a bad thing, I would point out how much I love the old 4AD sound and lament the fact that it kind of got consumed by Britpop in the early 90’s.  This reminds me strongly of what would’ve happened if it had been allowed to evolve into the current era – the shimmery synth pads of old amended with treated samples and tweaked electronics, the vocals brought down from the inscrutable stratosphere into the forefront, and the tendency to kick a little harder (case in point – “Painted Gold” builds to a chunky guitar riff and swirling synths from a  simple mix of staccato guitars and vocals).

In short, it’s really freaking good.

Gusgus – 24/7

I’ve been a fan of this band since their 9-piece-Icelandc-artist-collective days, and have always been a little leery of a lot of their transformations.  They’ve lost members, they’ve added members.  Now they’re down to a three-piece again, original vocalist Daniel Agust is back with them, they’re signed to the label for all things minimal, Kompakt, and their sound is stripped down to a core of techno beats, squelchy basslines, buzzing synth leads, and slick vocals.

This works pretty well, actually.  While it lacks some of the immediate hooks we got on their first two albums,  the return of Agust augurs well for them.  I had no problem with their previous vocalist, “Earth”, other than she sounded a bit too house-diva for their sound, stripping the music of some of its originality.

“24/7” is surprisingly short – it’s only six tracks (albeit, some are upwards of 12 minutes long) and I honestly find about two tracks to be on the annoying side.  When it works, though, it really works.  The lead single “Add This Song” is a driving techno track of the old-school Detroit variety, with an infectious vocal hook.   “Hateful” features guest vocals from Jimi Tenor and a machine-gun of a bassline.  “Bremen Cowboys” sounds like a classic techno jam.

It’s not quite a return to form, but it’s a unique sound melding a retro cool with a pop sensibility.

Bell X1 – Blue Lights on The Runway

The single “The Great Defector” has made some inroads in US pop radio of late, although I heard it played constantly on the radio in their homeland of Ireland several months back.

That track displays an affinity for an almost Talking Heads-like sound.  The rest of the album doesn’t sound like that, though.   Paul Noonan’s vocals does veer into Byrne-ish textures, but the bulk of the album is straightup pop.  While a lot of the arrangement harkens back to classic 60’s guitar bands and alt-pop, the instrumentation and performance displays a distinctly modern electropop edge.  The lyrics display a rather unusual wordplay, veering from literary references to oblique metaphor to pop culture references, but without the kind of preciousness that one might think accompanies that.

Being a pop band, their music would have to live and die by the hooks.  When they’ve got a hook, it’s usually pretty monstrous.  The aforementioned single is ludicrously catchy, as are more straightforward songs like “Amelia”  and  “One Stringed Harp.”

What is surprising is the lack of seriously uptempo tracks – aside from “Defector”, pretty much everything falls into the mid-tempo or ballad category.  And then the ballads have a twangy, almost alt-country feel about them.  “The Curtains Are Twitchin’” almost expects Neko Case to make an appearance.

It’s a bit of a mixed bag overall – satisfying listening from a pop standpoint, but not heavy on single material.

Empire of The Sun – Walking On A Dream

Australia’s Empire Of The Sun had a minor hit on their hands when iTunes listed  “Walking on a Dream” as a featured single, and “We Are The People” ended up in a commercial. It provided a pretty good snapshot of what the band was all about, too.  It’s an odd band, overall – the music is very much informed by 80’s radio pop, and the vocals sound like Gary Numan after a bender with Brian Molko.   Jangly guitars, chugging rock basses and fuzzy analog synths all come into play with a slightly more modern house/hip-hop production edge.  Their album cover deliberately looks like the poster for a cheesy 80’s sci-fi/fantasy epic, which says a lot about what the band is trying to accomplish.  It does sound like a soundtrack for some nonexistent “Neverending Story” ripoff, right down to the gratingly annoying love ballads.  It borders on self-parody, but that appears deliberate, and I can’t decide if that’s clever or just irritating.

It’ll be interesting to see what this band carries off in the future – the shtick that informs their music works now, but whether their catchy retro-dance tracks will stand up to future exploration is a big unknown.  Especially given the lack of variety in Luke Steele’s voice.

Imogen Heap – Ellipse

Imogen Heap is an odd bird.  And when I say “bird”, I’m not using the britslang for woman, I mean “she’s often seen wearing a lot of feathers.”

I’m almost tempted to forego saying anything about her new album, “Ellipse”, merely because she has blogged , vBlogged, tweeted, forum’ed, and youtubed the album’s creation in such detail that anyone who’s aware of the album probably already knows an awful lot of fine-grained details.

The album itself?  It’s good.  It’s not as immediate as “Speak For Yourself” – there’s nothing quite as soaring as “Hide and Seek” and nothing quite as dark as “Headlock” or  “Closing In.”  It is, however, much more complex in terms of arrangement, production and programming.  It’s intensely multilayered, the soundfield is huge and detailed, and the sound is astoundingly lush.  Her voice remains as elastic as ever, even within the hundreds of overdubs.

So that’s not a problem.

The songs themselves usually take a while to develop.  The leadoff single, “First Train Home” has a spartan, understated beat until the climax of the song.  Most songs take a bit to get going.  Once they do get going, the wait is usually worth it.    All it means is that there are fewer “radio-friendly” songs, which is kind of a non-issue for Imogen Heap anyway.

That’s not a problem either.

The problem is that a number of the songs teeter on the self-indulgent side.  The lyrics wander into twee, Tori-Amos-in-fairyland territory periodically, there’s a song that’s made entirely of processed vocal overdubs and beatboxing (didn’t Bjork do that already?  And isn’t that a bad sign?)  The “making of” video that comes with the iTunes download is bafflingly strange, involving Heap wandering around her house with plastic biscuit containers over her ears, supposedly as a way of explaining the songs.  She hasn’t quite gone over to the inexplicable side yet, but she’s dangerously on the edge.

What is frankly amazing about this album was the level of interaction Heap had with her hardcore fanbase during its production.  While she’s never been a multiplatinum artist, she’s developed an enthusiastic following, and her constant updates, use of fan feedback to determine which versions of songs make it to the album, and solicitation of fan artwork basically ensured extremely strong sales on release.   She’s quickly become the darling of the “new media” world, which is both heartening and annoying.  Heartening because it does prove the concept of some of these new media promotion processes, annoying because now they’re all going to be de rigueur  for anyone releasing anything, giving those of us who make music independently even more distasteful stuff to do.   Even Ms. Heap complained about the level of self-promo she had to do.  That doesn’t bode well for the rest of us.