Girl Detective Interview

Rani Woolpert and Jay Oppman are Girl Detective, a Chicago-based postmodern/alt-rock duo who create lush, often shoegazey sounds that call back to the best of the 80s-era 4AD bands. Since Woolpert featured Turntabling’s “house band” and DJ multimedia project Paisley Babylon a while back during her stint on Transistor Radio, we thought it was high time to return the favor. Especially since Girl Detective performs live on Monday, April 30, 2012 at 8PM at Martyrs in Chicago located at 3855 N. Lincoln Avenue.

Describe the Girl Detective sound–your press kit defines you as an experimental, cerebral…listening to tracks like “Life’s A Movie”, it would be easy to associate GD with the as-of- then defined “Post-Modern” sound, that later got shoehorned into “Alternative”. But what are YOU thinking?

Rani: Boy, for me that’s a super tough one. I listen to tons of music, but have never been very good with labels or genre tags. I’m going to leave that to Jay to elaborate on any specific titles. People who have heard our music have used those labels you mention, and that is where we got those from. I saw it and thought… yeah, that sounds like us. I can say more of where we come from, though, as far as our influences.

When I first heard Jay’s music, I had been working with someone else to write songs and was having difficulty trying to create melodies and vocals. I was using this other musician’s songs, and they were more electronic and I felt like I needed a solid guitar sound in there to give me a background to come up with vocals.

I did a Craigslist search through musician postings and found Jay on there and linked to his page. I had been looking for someone with a Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) – type guitar sound, and when I heard Jay’s samples online, I was totally blown away. His music was really dark, and made me think of Depeche Mode as well, which is one of my all-time favorite bands, and I was really impressed with his guitar playing and just the overall sound. I contacted him and we did a little with that other project, but I said I’d also like to see if I could try writing some vocals over his music, as I thought it was just so cool! A bit more about what I’m into… I listened to those other bands I mentioned, but also to Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, New Order, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Smiths—just so many of those fantastic 80s bands.

They have been in my bloodstream, you could say, since they were part of my teen years and I’ve never been impacted by music in the same way since–that is the language I speak. In the creation of a vocal sound, I don’t try to go for anything. I’m just singing, but I think what I love does come out someone in there. I think Morrissey, Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), Peter Murphy and Sinead O’Connor are all mixed in there somehow, as those are the people I most sing
to/with.

I can say more about what I’m going for as a person coming from a visual arts background. I have a background professionally in motion graphics and some audiovisual art direction and I have an interest in creating/crafting rich environments like Bill Viola has done with some of his sound/video installations and like Laurie Anderson was doing with her performance art that also integrated A/V and kinetics. I sort of live in this rich dreamscape in my mind and it’s multi-level.

Jay’s songs are a rich soundscape and they already have that going on. For me, as a vocalist, I want to tell stories and go to some other place with what I’m doing. So, when I come up with vocals (which are usually completely improv) I am kind of accessing that state to make them at all. And, I think that the music is actually being received that way, as that is some of the feedback we’ve been receiving—that sense of otherworldliness or something. It’s astounding, as I have that in my head, but would have no way of knowing how to put that out musically. But I think it’s just happening. What would you call that genre?? Again, that’s a tough one!

Jay: If music was a drink and you wanted to order a Girl Detective you would mix The Cure, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode, Joy Division/New Order, The Church, Dead Can Dance with maybe a touch of The Beatles and Pink Floyd.

Girl Detective is a duo, so there’s obviously a bit of a challenge re-creating the lush sounds of your studio work on stage. What do you and bandmate Jason Oppman do to keep the music as multi-layered as what you’re doing in the recording studio? Or have you stripped the sound down to a more basic approach for the live gigs?

Rani: Yes—that is a challenge. Our sound is a really rich tapestry and we want people to experience the depth of it at a live show. I know when I go to see music, I really want to be taken out of my day-to-day thoughts. Just like with movies. I want to live in that world for a while. And, we want to do that with our live shows—to envelop the audience within a blanket of sound. So, we wouldn’t want to strip the songs back any. Actually, kind of the opposite is true. Vocally, I’ve been pleased with my voice just given some house reverb, although we are working within our own arsenal of tools (Jay has tons of expensive gear!) to create a more fine-tuned solution for the live sets.

Jay: As Girl Detective is in the early stages, we are using our backing tracks of drums/bass/piano/synth from our studio recordings and doing all guitars and vocals live. As we evolve we may play bass and piano live, too. I would imagine for certain shows we may possibly go with a stripped down version of a few songs depending on what type of venue and event we are playing, but at this point we want listeners to first hear the songs with the lush sound before taking any layers away as we want them to become familiar with our sound/style.
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AM & Shawn Lee Interview

AM & Shawn Lee collaborated on 2011′s Celestial Electric, released digitally and on vinyl on the most excellent ESL label. We’ve covered ESL artists before–most notably Chris Joss who is still cranking out amazing retro grooves like nobody else can. (Joss released a fantastic new album, “No Play, No Work” in October.)

The AM & Shawn Lee collaboration has a lot of  analog synth texture to it, which always sounds great on vinyl, but there’s also a heavy singer/songwriter vibe–Nilsson meets Gary Numan Uptown?

The Numan reference is probably too doomy for this album until you get to tracks like Dark Into Light, which is a bit heavy handed on the rhyming, but arguably one of the best cuts for lovers of heavy, low end synth.

Turntabling interviewed AM & Shawn Lee by e-mail just before they started their new tour (details at the end of the interview).

First-a bit of background. Tell us a bit about AM & Shawn Lee, how things got started and what’s going on now.

Shawn Lee: Well, according to legend, AM emailed me after hearing my music on the radio in LA. This is true! I emailed him back.  We stayed in touch with cyber exchanges. I played on one of his tracks. When he came to London we hung out at my studio and I went to his gig. We hit it off… I later came to LA to play some live shows. I invited AM to sit in with my band on a couple of tunes. He did! We hung out more. We listened to records. We bonded…I said “We should make a record together”! He said “yes”! We did!!

This may sound obvious given the state of the music biz at the moment, but how did you decided to start releasing things on vinyl as opposed to the easier, more cost effective route of digital-only sales?

Shawn Lee: Well we were releasing in the obvious digital formats anyway. We are both fans of vinyl and it was clear to us that this album would have to be on wax. It smells lovely!!!! Nothing sexier than 12 inches of round platter, baby!

Do you find that the vinyl format serves some of your music better? Thinking of the Gary Numan-esque synth tones on tracks like Dark Into Light where the analog format would definitely favor those textures…

Shawn Lee: You can’t beat the sound fidelity of new properly cut vinyl. It ain’t a record til it’s a record- you know what I mean?! Not to mention it’s a great visual package as well.

Technically speaking, what was your major challenge of putting out digital and vinyl formats?

AM: Well the most obvious thing to do is have it remastered for vinyl…which we did. This is very important. We also re-did the artwork layout wise. We did a gatefold vinyl so we had more space to work with. Andy Votel (Finders Keepers) was kind enough to do all the artwork which is amazing. George Horn mastered the album for vinyl.

What is it about turntable culture that keeps it alive after all these years, in your opinion–sound quality aside, what attracts you to vinyl as a format not only for releasing music but also collecting?

AM: I think the main reason is that it is so tangible. It’s big and requires you to really put attention into artwork and layout. The 60s and 70s were such a magical time for that because so much went into the photograhpy, artwork, layout and liner notes. There was a certain pride in it.

I think that is coming back because many of us look back on those types of records and want to give our record the same love and sense of pride and detail. Oh wait, you asked about sound! Ha ha. Well, vinyl just is. Nothing sounds like it. The highs have a certain crispiness about them and the lows are so warm and full. But I personally think the resurgence has more to do with aesthetics than sound.

Any plans to stick with vinyl for future releases? Or is this more an experiment for you? What’s your experience been with vinyl as a format for the new album, and how do you like how it’s doing so far?

Shawn Lee: Yes we plan on releasing future records on vinyl . The CD as a format is dying out but vinyl continues to live on. As far as physical formats go, Records are the real deal. Vinyl is final….

Give us some dirt on working closely with Thievery Corporation and how do you like the ESL family?

Shawn Lee: Thievery are like a rock and roll circus! Long hair, spliffs, Jack Daniels, yoga! It’s an interesting mix. I’ve known Rob Garza for many years now and he is one cool dude. Everybody in their band was super nice and it was a great experience all round.

AM: Touring with Thievery Corporation was pretty classically rock n’ roll and they were super cool. They watched our show every night. That says a lot. After our last show with them in Oakland they had an after party at a club down the street. We walked in and Rob Garza was upstairs in a private area surrounded by different folks.

He asked if I wanted a drink and I noticed he had  a Corona. I was like “sure, I’ll have a Corona.” He made a motion to someone and 10 min. later an entire tub of Corona showed up along with a couple bottles of tequila. I was like “oh yeah.”

AM & Shawn Lee are currently on the Dark Into Light Tour which ranges from New York, Chicago, Ohio and elsewhere in the US, all the way to Quebec. Get tour dates and info at AMSounds.com

Paisley Babylon Interview on Transistor Radio

If you’re into Paisley Babylon, the Turntabling.net band/turntablism project, don’t miss the Paisley Babylon interview segment featured on this week’s edition of Transistor Radio.

Transistor is an amazing Chicago-based shop selling vinyl, art, books and mixed-media art. I covered Transistor recently as part of the Vinyl Road Rage series and this is definitely one of the hippest new Chicago music haunts in the area.

One of the things that makes Transistor so awesome is their involvement beyond the four walls of the shop with things like their regular Transistor Radio show. As it happens, I’m performing at Transistor as Paisley Babylon this Friday (October 15th, 2010 at 8PM) and I was interviewed in anticipation of the show on Transistor Radio.

Host Rani Woolpert asked a lot of great questions about the origins of Paisley Babylon, how I got into turntablism, mashups and the like. Christian Marclay I am not, but he’s definitely the spiritual godfather of what I’m doing these days as Paisley Babylon with the five turntables, five echo boxes and crates of vinyl…

There are two other guests on the Transistor Radio show besides me–Chicago mixed media artist Damon Locks, whose work (what little I’ve seen) looks amazing, and ditto for sustainable architect and furniture designer Eve Fineman. They’re both well worth checking out. Transistor Radio is quickly becoming one of my favorite Sunday night listening pleasures–now I look forward to Sundays for it, along with my all-time favorite Sunday radio experience Word Jazz with Ken Nordine.

Friends of Paisley Babylon (I’ve always felt uncomfortable about saying “fans”) should definitely have a listen to the Transistor Radio interview with me about PB, but please stay tuned for Locks and Fineman after my segment. Good stuff all round.

–Joe Wallace

Boy Eats Drum Machine Interview w/Jon Ragel

Boy Eats Drum Machine is Jon Ragel, who is a turntablist, analog synth lover and musical innovator from Portland. A while back he teamed up with Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen for some live mashup action, mutilating Michael Jackson, Talking heads and other luminaries in the best of all possible ways with live bass and guitars plus the ever-present turntables.

But that’s the past–the here and now has Boy Eats Drum Machine funkier than ever with a new collection of excellent, danceable tracks–20 in all.

20 Beats is hot off the presses as it were, on Bandcamp, iTunes and elsewhere. Turntabling wanted to know how the vinyl fits in with Boy Eats Drum Machine’s latest and get the skinny on this excellent new BEDM album.

Turntabling: Give us the lowdown on 20 Beats. What’s going on here?

Jon Ragel: This is a collection of 20 brand new instrumentals, all of which started out as breaks grabbed from Bridgetown Breaks 1 and 2. I worked pretty fast, so there’s a raw edge to the parts, as well as more bite in the guitars and synths than anything else I’ve done. Each track has it’s own album cover too.

Turntabling: You list ‘turntablist’ as one of your specialties–how does turntabling factor in on the new record?

I only pull breaks and sounds from vinyl. It’s an aesthetic thing. Also, I like the limitation of working with vinyl. You have to use your hands to make it fit. It always ends up being a tad imperfect. I like that. Most electronic music sounds way too perfect to my ears.

Is 20 Beats coming on vinyl? BEDM has released material on vinyl previously–what are the challenges of recording/mastering/getting an album ready for a vinyl release is like compared to doing it for digital distribution?

It’s just a digital release for now. I’m still trying to recoup on Booomboxxx and Hoop and Wire, both of which came out on vinyl. My desire to make art currently outweighs the money it brings in, so I’m thankful for this whole digital angle on releasing music. It’s cheaper, for sure. This album has been free, basically.

Rainbow Records made the vinyl for both Booomboxxx and Hoop and Wire. They send 5 copies to inspect. In both instances I felt good about the way they sounded. No hassle, really.

I think vinyl naturally sweetens the deficiencies of 16 bit, 44.1k recording, as well as it’s lack of depth. I can’t wait to get something more robust, but I still think the motu 828 is a nice piece of gear, especially considering how inexpensive it is.

What advice do you have for someone contemplating putting music on vinyl who has only done digital releases prior to vinyl?

Oddly enough, I’m not much of an audiophile, so my knowledge on this topic could use a little spit-shine. I tend to listen to music at the day job or during long drives. I love my vinyl LPs more as a historian.

That said, I really appreciate sweet lows and dynamic range, so my gut instinct is that recordings with those two qualities are going to sound best on vinyl. Basically, with an mp3 you’re trying to make it really damn loud.

You don’t have to do that with vinyl because audiophiles like dynamic range and have systems designed to sound musical, rather than simply “bassy” or “loud”. So I’d say leave more dynamic range in a vinyl master than you would a digital master.

20 Beats—available on CD? What’s the future of the shiny disc? Some say it’s dead already and doesn’t know when to lie down, but some bands I know insist that you still need a disc to be taken seriously at shows and by reviewers. What’s your take from a musician standpoint?

I’ll do a boutique run of cd’s. I’ve never loved CDs mind you, but if you tour CDs are a no-brainer. People give you money for them. Money is good. Also, it seems to me a lot of radio/press peeps still have stacks of cd’s on their desks. We want them to hear our music, so we should give them music the way they like it. I’m talking mailing out 550 CDs.

That’s expensive. That’s inefficient. That’s…sounding like the music industry. Of course, I won’t be doing that with 20 Beats. 20 Beats is an experiment. Also, I’m too broke to do that again this year.

I really like digital. I wish more people would catch onto buying lossless files. The technology is there. The technology is exciting. The technology is simply way ahead of people’s ability to take in information.

You can send someone an email but you can’t give them the time to read it, along with the other 99 emails they get that day. It’s impossible. So technology isn’t the issue, but rather a simple industry-wide changing of the guards over the next 10-20 years. Watch a teenager text their friends while eating a sandwich and following So You Think You Can Dance and you’ll know what I mean.

Also, I think the internet is misunderstood as a tool. People need actual human contact. People want to feel cultural. People want to feel…well…human. There’s only so much nibbling around on the internet someone can do before they need to go out, hear some music, bump asses with a few people, and get a good buzz.

So long as we musicians are out there being a part of that we’ll be culturally relevant. We might even make a few bucks in the process.

You can find 20 Beats by Boy Eats Drum Machine at Bandcamp. Check out the two free tracks Silverskate Gateway and the current Turntabling favorite, Josh Skins, which is funky as all hell.

King Britt Interview

I’m not a huge Digable Planets fan, but when I interviewed King Britt for Gearwire.com back in 2006, he was great to talk to. Full of stories, advice for new DJs and a lively personality all round. I’d check him spinning anytime. My favorite part of the discussion is when Britt laments the fact that the joy of searching for those obscure tracks is gone with the advent of instant download gratification. Too true, KB, too true! Seeking and finding are half the fun of vinyl. Downloading, not so much.

King Britt is naturally a source of interest for budding DJs all over the globe, so I thought I drop Part One and Part Two of my chat with KB, and throw in a little YouTube love with the man besides. I didn’t have anything to do with the clip below, it wash shot at the Novara Jazz Fest in Italy earlier in ’08.