Rhythm and Noise | John McEntire

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Rich Wells

           
 

FROM POP TO EXPERIMENTAL, IT'S ALL IN A DAY'S WORK FOR ENGINEER-DRUMMER JOHN MCENTIRE

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To get more of a jazzy drum sound, John McEntire will sometimes go with a simplified setup: stereo overheads and a mic on the bass drum.

Most of it was done with an Akai sampler, sequencing it using [Opcode] Studio Vision Pro. And I'd just gotten [Propellerhead] ReCycle, which is why there's a lot of chopped-up beats on that record. At that time, it was really exciting to be able to do that. The Fawn was an experiment in getting things done with these new tools, in a way that fit with our aesthetic.

By the time we did Oui [Thrill Jockey, 2000], which is the first record we did in the current Soma, there was a quantum leap forward in terms of what was available to us studiowise; for instance, using the 2-inch machine and the computer in tandem. We wanted a really broad palette to work with, including string and horn arrangements.

With One Bedroom [Thrill Jockey, 2003], the focus was on seeing how far we could push that, delving into many keyboard overdubs and as many different synth textures as possible. I had two ARP 2600s at the time, and they play a fairly large role on that record.

We felt like it worked out well, and for those songs it seemed like a logical thing to continue to do. But when we started work on Everybody [Thrill Jockey, 2007], we decided to switch it up again and go for the live-band thing. And that's a more accurate representation of what we do when we're on tour; we don't have a sequencer playing the parts with everyone playing along to it. We play the songs as a 4-piece rock band.

It seems like it's always a process of going toward something, then coming back again. The last two records have been fairly concise in terms of the arrangements and overall presentation. We wanted to step back from that baroque, big-arrangement thing and write very direct 3-minute pop songs — two guitars, bass, drums, and just the occasional keyboard overdub.

And what kind of differences are there with a band like Tortoise?

For Tortoise, we try to leave it a little more open ended. Sometimes we may want to use one of the instruments, or just a small idea, as a springboard for further experimentation. It's also rare for all five of us to do a basic track together; usually either three or four of us play at the same time. Lately we've been tending more toward working on songwriting and arranging, whereas in the past we just had ideas we'd record, and then arrange it in post. That's worked well for us in certain circumstances, but we're a little bit wary of relying on that too much because, for us at least, if you have a record with a lot of pieces like that, the fear is that it will sound too constructed. Sometimes those pieces don't have the vibrancy of people playing together in a room, so it's always good to have some contrast between the way the tracks on the record are created.

Apart from that, we do things by consensus. Two or three people will put down the foundation of something, and usually there'll be an overdubbing process, which can last anywhere from a couple of days to years, depending. And then it's just a matter of tightening up what's there and finding a direction for the sounds and for the mix in general.

Even though I'm dealing with the nuts and bolts of that, we're all making decisions collectively about the right general approach for a piece or how it should evolve. Everything is fair game as long as we like it and it sounds good or interesting. I guess it doesn't even have to sound “good”!

As I mentioned, one of the trends that's been happening with us in recent years is that we've been moving more toward approaching things from a writing perspective as opposed to a postproduction perspective. We're spending more time in the rehearsal space working on the arrangements beforehand, making sure that everybody has parts that they're happy with. If there's extra work that happens after that, fine, no problem, but it's more about having things that are compositionally sound rather than the old days of just looping one idea for 8 minutes and making a mix out of it.

With three percussionists in the group, is it necessary to leave space?

We all tend to hang back instinctively. It's very rare that there's a case where we're like “Oh, we're all playing too much.” Typically it's the opposite. It's funny, with Dan [Bitney] and Johnny [Herndon] and I, a lot of times we'll rotate through something one of us might be working on. One of us will start out playing a part and then say to another, “You know, why don't you try this? I think your feel would work better for this.” Then the next person will try it and say to the third person, “I don't know, why don't you try it?” [Laughs.] And eventually we get to a place where we've found the right person and the right feel for the tune. It just takes a little trial and error.