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RE: Maserati: End Of Man (post-rock/krautrock/electronic)
Dude ... Strange Mercy was an absolute gamechanger for me, pop-production and mixing wise. And tasteful drum sampling. And everything else. The fact that I'm going to cut stuff in my house and get to hear it through his vision and his rig makes me unprofessionally giddy.
Thanks for the kind words. It's been a two decade long journey and I still suck the vast majority of the time. I'm just fortunate to have positioned myself in a way that buys me enough time for massive trial and error ... enough that through rigorous and ego-destroying revision I can pick out a nice moment here and there. This was also, in all ways, a group effort. The dudes in Maserati are some of the most inspiring dudes you'd ever get the privilege of working with.
You read my mind with Strange Mercy! That album has become such a touchstone in terms of style for me. Everything about it rips me in half. The hazy synth textures combined with the ultra modern orchestral arrangement styles, the super fat drum breaks, and of course all of the guitar production. He brought so much to Annie's style and let all of the little avant-garde tweaks shine. There are so many radical production choices that form a coherent product, it's incredible.
"Rigorous and ego-destroying revision " is going to be a phrase I steal.
Have you listened to Dot Hacker at all? They are an experimental rock band that sounds like what would happen if Radiohead and Muse stripped their music down to it's core, wrote clever minimalist harmony, and were fronted by a singer who sounded like a roomful of ghosts. Their production has some awesome subtlety.
Just checked out Dot Hacker. Pretty cool shoegaze/explosions in the sky/pinback kinda stuff. Little bit of notwist and def muse influence as well. Besides having the current chili peppers guitarist, I noticed Jonathan Hischke is in it ... he's in with Juan and my buddy Nick from Tera Melos ... think he played bass in the four piece incarnation of Hella, also? Anyhow, he's part of that whole scene that has given rise to pedalsandeffects.com whose youtube is just the raddest.
As far as strange mercy goes, brother we are on the same page. It's consistenly one of my mix references for anything in that sphere and the synth and electronic drum work on that record eclipse just about anything else I've come across. Fun fact: Annie demo'd the entire record herself in the drummer from Death Cab's studio. Dude had closed the place down for financial reasons but had the lease for an extra month. He gave it to annie, who evidently was way down the writers block wormhole after actor, for either free or not much at all (not sure about that part) ... and she basically sketched the entire thing out in isolation, then brought it to john who took it to the stratosphere. I can't help but feel like the absense of this method is what has made her work progressively less jaw dropping to me.... but .... well that's like saying houses of the holy is less of a record than zep IV. I celebrate the whole catalog but strange mercy is the be all end all electronic lady guitar pop record forevermore, forever, for all time.
Your office space reference killed me dead in the middle of all that.
Yessss to Jonathan Hischke [and Josh Klinghoffer]. For my money, that's the best Hella album. It's the only material I've heard by a band that gets into the same zone as The Mars Volta, even though it's totally distinct stylistically. Pedals and Effects is theeee life. Juan and Nick are very high in my pantheon of rad musicians, as is Annie Clark of course. That story is super cool, I think I heard a whisper of it but never the whole situation. I agree about the method, there is something to Actor and Strange Mercy that the followups didn't quite capture, although it's still stellar work. Also we might have to have a fistfight or something, because I'm all about Houses of the Holy.
I remember hearing a while back that Juan was trying to put together a group with Annie, Kimbra, and Deantoni Parks. One can only dream how insane that project would have been.
Shut. Up.
Annie kimbra Deatoni (TECHNOSELF!!!) and Juan would be the be all end all supergroup to end all be all end all supergroups.