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Ask and ye
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The fourth record from Brooklyn’s Parts & Labor, Receivers, is probably one of the most densely recorded records since My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields, Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce or at least their fellow Brooklyn-ites Oneida had their grubby mitts on the faders. This foursome have taken Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound concept into the stratosphere, with their anthemic pop providing the centre as loops of swirling oscillations, snippets of conversations and other assorted blips and bleeps provide the soundscapes hovering above. “I think, on average, we used between 30 and 50 tracks for each song,” says vocalist/bassist BJ Warshaw. “We used to be pretty focused about only recording stuff we could recreate live and I think now we’re just more concerned with recreating the spirit of the record when we play live. Through different electronic devices like iPods and samplers, we’re able to adequately build the songs up, but we don’t try to get the record exact. I’ve really found a respect for both mediums, recording and playing live, and that there can be two sides to a band.” Although the band piled the tracks on themselves, they’re hardly the only culprits for this huge sound. Before beginning the recording in Wisconsin, they held an open call through their Web site, inviting people to send them loops, conversations, found sounds and so on, with over 100 people finally contributing. The band posted questions—like “What do your parents sound like?” or “What are you afraid of?”—and asked potential submitters to respond using sounds, spoken word or whatever. No submitted sound was left out, with the band manipulating some of the contributions while featuring many of their more interesting finds prominently in the mix. “We kind of got the idea from Roger Waters. When he was recording Dark Side of the Moon, he would conduct interviews of people at Abbey Road on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and feature the audio on the record. It was really time-consuming to go through all of the submissions, but it was manageable, and it was just a lot of fun to hear the responses.” WITH SPECIAL NOISE AND HEY PREDATOR! |
