The EM Poll

Yours, Mine, and Ours

Oct 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Mike Levine

           

Of course, the demo version doesn't allow the user to save.

You can't save anything, but to me there are so many uses for it. Like if you're a guitar player and you want to learn the acoustic guitar part: you can solo it. Or let's say you want the karaoke version of the song: just mute that pesky vocal and it's gone. I think there are very simple uses for it, and then there are obviously more. What I really hope to see is that kids in their bedrooms with their laptops will really dive into it and turn it into something that's much more modern and much cooler and just kind of different.

You established Limoremix.com, a Web site for people to submit remixes of the White Limousine tracks and where you'll be posting selected remixes. How does it work?

Creative individuals who do cool stuff at home can post those remixes and they're streamable, and then anyone can go on the site and listen to what other people have done. Depending on what happens with all of that, there might be some “version two” of White Limousine that ultimately exists that will be the best of the remixes from each song.

So what kinds of remixes have you been receiving?

Initially I was getting mixes that felt very polite to me in a way; they didn't want to change too much. But then I put the word out that what I was really interested in was people taking the materials and doing something radical. What's most interesting to me is when they take those materials and kind of use them and put them into this more electronic-music genre, whether it's hip-hop, or trance music, or progressive house, or whatever it is.

This is your first CD on Zoe. Did they freak out when you told them you wanted to release the individual tracks along with it?

Luckily, when Troy Hansbrough — who's my A&R person — first heard the record and approached me about putting it out on Zoe, it was the first conversation I had with him. I said, “Okay, I love your label, you have all quality artists, you're really great people, but here's the deal: I want a 3-panel Digipack, there's a CD called Mine, there's a DVD called Yours,” and I explained to him exactly what it was. And I think he was intrigued by the idea enough that he said, “Okay, I can accept that.”

Then what happened?

There was the kind of marketing meeting where I had to go in there and explain it to everyone around the conference table at 9 a.m. in that kind of hideous way [laughs].

Let me ask the cynical question: was part of the reason to release the remix tracks to make the record stand out from the crowd?

FIG. 2: A view from inside Sheik’s control room. In the background is his small live room.

Absolutely, and I make no apologies about that at all because the reality is that there are so many CDs that come out every day. It's just absurd. There's just a glut of music right now.

Much of it's not very good.

Most of it is not very good. And you know, frankly, I'm the first one to say, “Am I really interested in hearing another record by a white guy with an acoustic guitar? Like, please, shoot me in the head, okay?” [Laughs.] It's just not that compelling, really. Couple that with the fact that I had this initial conception of the record that was much more minimalist electronica, I thought this was a very good way to put out the record that meant something to me, that really moved me personally in my own heart. But then also that there's the possibility that this other version of the record could exist, or multiple versions of it. And that it could continue to spin out versions for a really long time. And to me, that's what's most fascinating about it.

Let's talk a little about your studio. I see you have a separate recording room next to your control room [see Fig. 2].

It's kind of where drums and loud guitars happen. Like a little live room.

What kind of mixer are you using?

FIG. 3: Sheik’s Calrec console was originally in a BBC radio studio. On top of it are M-Audio BX8 monitors.

It's a Calrec console [see Fig. 3] from the BBC. It was at Maida Vale Studios in London, which is a classical music broadcast studio.

What's the vintage?

It's an '80s model. It's solid-state, but it's very musical. Calrec was like a sister company to Neve. It's kind of a poor man's Neve.

What kind of mics do you generally use on your voice and acoustic guitar when recording?

I have kind of a rare microphone that Dave Royer was making before he started making the ribbon mics that everyone knows him for now. According to him, it's basically a [Neumann] U 47 with a slightly different capsule.