When did you first get interested in recording as a process?
I probably started recording when I was 6 or 7 – I remember I had a little tape recorder. I started playing drums when I was three years old. My parents would give me music; I would listen to albums and compare the sound of recorded instruments to the sounds that I was able to make myself in real life. Then I got a 4-track when I was maybe 12 – a Tascam Porta One. Actually, before I even got the 4-track, I was recording on two boomboxes. I would record a drum track on one boombox, then play that over a different boombox, and rerecord myself playing guitar. I played drums, and my sister played electric guitar. When she went away to summer camp, I started playing her guitar when she wasn't around. I played music with people sporadically, but it was hard to find people that I really connected with on that level. Recording became a substitute for that. It felt like a natural idea, to be like, "Well, if I can make a song, I can make a whole album; the cover, and everything."
What were some inspiring records or pieces of music for you early on?
When I was five or six my mom got me The Beatles' compilation, 1967–1970, and then Revolver was the next one. I was obsessed with those. I remember thinking, "Why do those cymbals ring for so long? It doesn't sound like that in real life. I need to get those kind of cymbals." I thought it was a certain type of cymbal. That must have led to me wanting to record – what I was hearing that I wanted to be able to do. Jimi Hendrix records really got me into recording as well. Back then, in the mid '80s, it was really hard to find out what effects he was using. I had a flanger, but his flanger sounded different from mine. I wanted to be able to do all the crazy panning that happens on those records and I naively thought that I could do anything! I realize that my records don't sound like mainstream, professional records. I feel they're getting closer, but there's a little bit of a fantasy element where I think I can make it sound like anything. Who knows if it really sounds like that, but that's what it makes me want to do it. By the time I got the 4-track, my favorite bands were the Stones and SST punk, like Black Flag and the Meat Puppets. I got out a bunch of my own cassettes recently, and, listening to them, every song is like a different genre. I wanted to try everything! Eventually I got a better 4-track cassette recorder. But before I got into Pro Tools – which was around 2000 – my dad [Kip Cohen] used to work for Herb Alpert [interviewed this issue], and Herb gave me his 1/2-inch, 8-track, a Tascam 80-8 – the one that doesn't have pitch control. At that point I wanted gear that made things sound crazy – I wasn't into the finer points of recording. I had the EQ knob on my mixer, and I had some different spring reverb units that I used. I also had tape delays. But I was never like, "Oh, I'm going to get a really good preamp or a compressor." I didn't care about compressors or anything like that until I had Pro Tools. It wasn't until I was in Deerhoof that I was like, "Oh yeah, compressors are interesting." The thing with the cymbal; I probably knew that it was compressed, but at the time I thought, in my mind, what I was doing was pretty close.
How do you get settled into a new space for recording? Is that something that's crucial?
When I was younger, I used to think that spaces didn't matter; like I could do this in a closet. But I'm starting to realize that I do better work in better environments. Overgrown Path was recorded in four different places between L.A. and Bennington, Vermont. I recorded part of it in an old Dodge dealership in Hoosick Falls, New York, that I rented out – it was like the boss's office. It had laminated wood paneling and this little secret door that opened to what was the secretary's desk. It was super dead in there. For As If Apart, I moved back to L.A. and I recorded it in the same spot that I recorded the new one in. I rent out a friend's garage; they helped me build it out. It's a little bit soundproofed, but it's basically a concrete floor with a rug on it and there are no windows. There's very little fresh air. It's not the best for your health, but it's affordable and it's worked well. I feel like I can't make another record in there though, and I've started sharing it with other people. Now I'm using itas apractice space. But that was where we made the Weyes Blood record [Front Row Seat to Earth, 2016], and lots of other recordings.
When you split your time between multiple spaces, some super dead and some more lively, does that dictate what you record in there?
I don't recommend moving around [from space to space], but I will experiment for a long time before I start recording. Hanging up blankets and rugs – I find that really helps. In Bennington, I remember corners in the rooms sometimes being problematic. I like getting pallets and putting a big piece of carpet over a pallet, and then putting it in the corner. That seemed to help. Not to make it completely dead – you could still hear some resonance – but with the drums I wanted them to sound pretty close mic'd. I don't like the roomy drum sound. When I hear certain types of roomy drum sounds, I think late '90s and early 2000s post rock. My ideal is that I want it to sound like a professional studio from the '70s, where it's pretty dead. I treat the rooms and then I also do a ton of corrective EQ. I try to make things sound consistent, from song to song. You can hear some differences on Overgrown Pathmore than the other records.
Do you have anything specific for corrective EQ'ing that you like to use?
Kenny Gilmore gave me the FabFilter EQ [plug-in], which is really nice. I'm using that one a lot now, but before that I was using the free one that comes with Pro Tools. I rely on those a lot to clean sounds up. The more that I use them, the quicker it is. I'm hearing sounds I didn't hear before. I don't have any hardware. Well, I have this Sony MX-20 mixer that I like to do summing through. I believe it's discrete, and it has FET preamps. It has a certain soft dynamic response I like, and I find it does something nice with the EQ. When everything [in a mix] is completely how I want it, I'll run tracks through it rather than bouncing in Pro Tools. It's got eight inputs. If someone had told me four years ago, "Oh, you've got to try and learn analog summing," I would have been like, "Whatever. I've been totally fine with doing everything in the box." It was only recently, mixing with Kenny, that he had suggested doing this. It's about a 5 percent difference, but I could hear it doing something.
How would you describe the overall effect you hear from analog summing?
