How do you guys create The Ex's sound and music and how is your music is recorded?
The energy thing of how we make the songs, what happens live and what happens in the practice room are really two quite different things. I mean, we don't jump up and down a lot in the practice room at all. We talk quite a lot, we play things over, we try to create a frame or a structure that later on will allow us to jump up and down. We don't try to make it too imprisoning so that when we play you can't breathe. We leave the possibility that once we start playing it's going to get looser and people are going to be able to breathe and play. The first gigs are a bit weird or stiff and slowly you find the right way to play it. Very quickly after one gig you know, "Oh this bit works or this bit doesn't work." You can't really tell this in the practice room, because you're sitting down and you can hear everything so everything sounds allright. When you get to a gig, you hardly ever hear... we can't hear each other, there are sounds from the audience, I can't hear Terrie, or... it's a completely different state you are in. You adjust the music that's been created in the practice room to the gig conditions, which are completely different. The sound is different. So the music changes. That's nice that we really react to the sound. When I go to the States, I have to use a different amp, and it's completely different, I mean there bits that sound the same, but then there are whole sections that I have to adjust to, because the whole reason I had decided to play those parts was because of a sound that was coming out of the amp, and suddenly that sound is not there — it's not there from Terrie, it's not there from Luc, and you get a bit disorientated and it takes a few gigs to get adjusted and you never ever feel it's as good. I think we're going to try to bring our own stuff over, because every time we tour in the States we suffer from that.
How does that translate into recording your music? Is recording more like playing live or playing in the practice space?
It's another third space that I am usually unsatisfied with, because it is neither live nor like the practice room. What happens is we play the songs for quite a while live before we go into the studio — the only time that The Ex ever recorded straight after being in the studio was Dead Fish and they recorded that live directly onto DAT. John Langford just set the mics up, they spent a whole day and then he recorded it directly. But I didn't think that was the best sounding Ex record, partly because the songs hadn't been played in a bit and you could hear that, they got much better later, those songs. The sound was a bit over- reverbed — the live room they did it in in this great studio in England [KGM Studios, in Wakefield]. It has a great live room but it's a bit reverby and when you record the whole band live in it, you can hear... I don't know if you've heard that record, but I think that's the result of a band going straight from the practice room to the studio rather than taking their music out on tour first. Because then all these really fine playing things, you don't even realize you are doing it, the more you play together the more the sound moves — and you do it by talking about it by thinking about it and you don't even realize you are doing it it just happens, and it's to do with wanting it to work. It's nice because usually when you try out something live most times everyone agrees on what works and what doesn't, most times everyone feels it immediately. We also get a reaction from the audience, which we take quite seriously. Even if we like something, if we've played it three or four times and we notice that people are a bit confused by it, they don't react, well I don't think there is something wrong with the audience there is something wrong with how we are putting the idea across. Which is very different I think from a lot of the stuff in the improv jazz scene. I think they don't take so much from the relation with the audience. It's a bit of this thing, "it doesn't matter what the audience thinks, it's all about the music if the audience likes it well good but if they don't..." I don't think that's true. I think that when you play before an audience they are intelligent and they can feel when something works and when it doesn't work, and that's a really important aspect. That's why playing live is so good, it's like having ten practices in terms of how the song will suddenly improve and sometimes it's brutal it doesn't make it and you've worked on a song for weeks and weeks and you take it on tour and somehow you've lost it, you've done all that work... If it doesn't work it doesn't work and it's better not to play it. But it's difficult because you have old songs that are in really good shape and you have new songs that you are trying out which are always going to be a bit more fragile and you have to be careful that you don't throw them away too quickly because the old songs sound good and the people in the audience know them... That's what we are busy with the whole time, balancing these two things and trying to keep the set alive so it doesn't feel like we're playing the same songs...
Working with Steve Albini, were there specific things you wanted to achieve by working together, and what kind of gear did you use to achieve these things?
Well, actually microphones are everything, they are his specialty He seems to have hundreds of different kinds of microphones. He doesn't use much gear at all — he has a simple analog mixing desk with a little bit of EQ on it, and he hardly EQ'd anything. Whenever he thought something didn't sound good, he'd change the microphone rather than trying to put it through a compressor. He spent a lot of time in the beginning positioning microphones really with incredible detail. A couple of times I bumped a microphone and it moved like 5 cm and he could hear it upstairs and he came down and looked like that (furrows brows) and moved it and that sound coming out was like "thhhrhrrrrr" (a really noisy part of the song!). It sounded like in the whole room it wouldn't have mattered where you put the mic, but he really could hear that something was changed. When I saw that, I was like, "Wow."
This is a guy who knows his mics.
Yeah! And his ears must be really really finely tuned to that. I guess if you have that level working in that way then you don't need to use all the other stuff. All of the other stuff is a bit compensating for if you can't get it on tape sounding good in the beginning, and that's what he managed to do. I can't really give you much information about gear though, I didn't even know what the name of his mixing desk is, you should ask him. He really likes it, he said it was analog — I didn't even know you had digital mixing boards nowadays.
Yeah, they've got all kinds of crazy stuff, big stuffy computer screens where you just sit there and basically can just go "whaa!" at it and it makes a song!
Yeah? Well, there you go! He's not really into that though.
I bet not!
But he has all these mics, I don't even know what kinds he used with us, but he's got Russian mics and old '50s mics and Chinese mics — really an incredible collection.
How many would you say he has, roughly?
Four or five hundred. He basically spent the whole first day working with the mics and then we went ahead and played our songs the way we play them. When we went to listen they really sounded more like The Ex than most times I've been recorded. It sounded like The Ex in the practice room, a beautifully recorded version of what we sound like in the practice room. Really clear — you could hear everybody, and the way the sounds kind of mix is the way he managed to get it, there was no instrument that sounded unfamiliar to us... He's like a kind of field recorder, he tries to capture our sound he doesn't try to produce it the way he wants it. He does the levels afterwards, that's a different thing. But to do the actual sound of the instruments, he tries to really get the sound that we are, that we have, and he's not trying to push us into some "style" or something. I think that's great and for us that was quite a pleasure. It meant that when we recorded it already sounded good, so that when we mixed it was already there, we just had to do a bit of levels, and it went really quickly, we didn't get sick of listening to the music. It wasn't spending hours gating reverbs and all this stuff.
How many days did the recording take?
We did it in 7 days I think, so we recorded three or something. Mixing was only two days, and it was very kind of relaxed, we'd stop and play a game of snooker, or was it billiards? and have a little bit to eat and come back. It was very relaxed. I think also from experience, knowing that your ears get tired quickly and it's better to stop for twenty minutes and watch a video or have a chat rather than struggling. I think it went well, it was really fast and painless.
What would you say that you learned most, that you took away from the experience of working with Albini — it seems that The Ex working with Albini was a really really good match of circumstances.
Certainly. We knew he really, really liked The Ex, When we asked him, he said he'd known The Ex since nearly their first single, and he knew that at some point he'd work with them. So when we asked him he was immediately into it. He had all the old records as well, which was really quite nice, because he's a big fan. When you are playing and when you are recording that feels good, you feel like you're in really good hands working with someone who really likes your music and isn't just doing it... Sometimes I've recorded with people who I think just don't like the roughness of our sound and they try to clean it up.
That's frustrating, isn't it?
And you try to explain to them that that's not what you want, but we're not great at explaining those things, we're not a super-articulate bunch of people in that field at all. We know with our ears when it isn't good, but it's very difficult to explain that because you are in the process. and usually engineers make out that they know much, much more, that it would sound better if you did this this or that, and after a while you... you kind of give up a bit and you let them deal with it. I think he [Albini] liked that roughness and tried to open it out and make space in this kind of noise and encourage it, and that is great. It wasn't like he was thinking "the guitars are too noisy or scratchy." He made them noisy and the thing that's strong about The Ex live, he managed to capture that... there are dynamics, and sometimes they are loud, I thought it was good for that, and it wasn't to do with equipment, I mean of course he has great mics but that wasn't the thing that impressed me the most when we went into the studio, it was the way he worked with these things...
And the next recording plans?
We'll be recording again with Steve in February. It's going to be quite an operation — we've got to get all the way out to Chicago and the flights alone cost as much as the recording. But the last one went so well and it's so good to get out of Amsterdam when you're recording, there's no distractions, you're in an environment where you can totally focus on the music.
The Ex and the studio "Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf", or Cow-Rent Company in Purmerend Holland
"Maybe some people think that The Ex play a lot of 'noise', but The Ex have a touch that is not like other bands. There is a lot of sound but somehow there is something pleasant there. You could listen to them for 3 hours and never get that buzzing in your ears!" — Zlaya
Where do ya go in Holland if you're a great punk, rock, or noise-rock band and you're looking to record? Well, surely there are many studios in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and even maybe in Utrecht where you could find yourself a densely-equipped new studio for your high-tech needs. Or, if you really seek to become part of the real fabric of Dutch punk/rock history, you'd seek the firm farm walls of the most recent standing version of Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf... that is, if you can find it! Best translated as "Cow-Rent Company" studio, this one-level farmhouse out in the flat- flowing-farmland of Purmerend is not so far from Amsterdam in miles, but certainly exists in its very own place in time and space. Over the years, there have been several incarnations of Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf's in different locations. Thus, the studio is geared up with equipment compiled over the years, from squat studios, donations, and purchases by fans and friends. Far from high-tech, far from digitally hotwired, far from the slickster modern age of computer processing and burn-by-joystick accessorization, Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf is a no-nonsense center where like-minded musicians make a gang of great noise!
The segue here is of course the band The Ex. At the various Koeienverhuurbedrijf's, The Ex made many a recording themselves and with friends, most recently with Chicago's Tortoise. In the earliest of the studios, The Ex recorded Disturbing Domestic Peace '80, History of What's Happening '82, Dignity of Labor '83, Tumult '83, Blueprints for a Blackout '84, and in the next two Koeienverhuurbedrijf's they recorded Pokkeherrie '85, Too Many Cowboys '87, Joggers & Smoggers and Scrabbling at the Lock in '91. The Ex's other albums were recorded elsewhere, such as Aural Guerilla in the UK and And The Weathermen Shrug Their Shoulders which was recorded in Amsterdam. Those who have recorded and produced The Ex include Dolf Planteyt [most albums], Jon Langford, Steve Albini, and Zlaya and Colin, who recorded the Fishtank project with Tortoise.
Het Koeienverhuurbedrijf is basically run by three individuals, one of whom is full-time producer/engineer Zlaya. I went out with Zlaya on a hazy cold and windy day in March 2000. Zlaya himself is originally from Sarajevo, and is one of many talented music-ex-pats from the region who have formed their own whole sub-scene within the rock, avant-garde, and punk music circles in Holland in the last years:
How long have you been recording here and how long has this studio been here?
The studio has been here now about 6 years, that's when I started working here. It took 7-8 months of lots of work to build, back in 1994.
Where did the gear come from?
Mostly from the studio's previous locations, and the squats. This is the first location that intends to be semi-professional/semi-commercial. All the previous locations had a lot more to do with the squat scenes — more about having a place to record and not really bothering to make them 'perfect'. Whereas this one is sort of in half-way. I personally still do things on the basis of, "Okay, I like the stuff, I want to record it", but I still have to make my living from it. It really matters, of course, what kind of music you want to be involved with. That is basically the kind of attitude that people remember this studio by. We record the stuff if we like the stuff — that's basically the attitude we have. The gear is pretty sufficient.
What are some of the main recording equipment here?
The main piece is a Soundcraft mixing console, and just a few small bits and pieces. 2" 24-track we got 2 years ago. And the Rane desk we also got two years ago.
What is that one used for now?
Right now it's an old Telefunken mastering machine, a 2-track analog mastering machine. It hasn't been used in the last 2-3 years. I always tell myself that I'm going to give it a try again, clean it up and get it working again, but... well... It looks great, doesn't it?
