Can you describe sound/music as an intro to those who don't know about Low?
We are a 3 piece that plays mostly quiet, slower, minimal music. Someone once described us as a cross between Simon & Garfunkel and Joy Division. A lot of people make a big deal about how slow and quiet we are, but I hope there is more to it than that!
You recorded this new album, Trust, in a church?
It's this old Catholic church that they were going to tear down about 15 years ago. Some group of people from the community got together and basically saved it, and turned it into this non-profit community space that, up until now, was basically maintained for weddings and local concerts put on by colleges — like choral concerts. Also, there's one of the last-of-its-kind pipe organs in the place that they've maintained really well — there are two of this particular model that exist in the world today. We had some equipment and they had this interesting place to record so we gave them a call to see if they were interested in some sort of a long-term/temporary rental situation. They agreed and they let us have the crying room.
What's the crying room?
I guess it's something common in Catholic churches — a room off to the side or to the back that's enclosed that has windows in it so that you can still see what's going on. It's for mothers and their crying babies. It's great because it's kind of soundproofed, the shape is irregular, and there are windows — so it made a perfect control room. We moved in this 24- track machine and board, pooled some resources from other people in town, and there we were. Our friend, Tom Herbers, engineered on the tracking for this new record and we were very lucky to have him there. Tom is used to working with us on various projects over the years so he knows our pace, too. I think it would have been impossible to do ourselves because with the studio being in an unconventional space, there's a bit more setting up. You can't just jump every time you have an idea to put down. Plus, we were the first project to record there, so there's always kinks to work out. Tom and our friend Eric Swanson would usually stay behind every night, after we were done, fixing and soldering stuff.
And I take it the church is rather large?
Yeah. It's very large — high ceilings — very ideal for ambience. A cappella choral stuff is really stunning, especially. It's a natural, built-in "large hall reverb". At the same time there are also bathrooms, little corner rooms, and changing rooms, so it kind of turned out perfect. We did most of the stuff in the bigger room with ambient mics. You can hear cars going by on the record. We also did some tracking at a "real" studio in Minneapolis called Third Ear, then shipped it all off to England to get mixed with Tchad Blake [Tape Op #16].
And that was at Real World...
I think he went out there to start working originally with Peter Gabriel and he ended up getting married to one of the engineers there. Now they have a son and everything — meanwhile he is still working on the new Peter Gabriel record. It's quite a facility. It's kind of funny going from our little thrown-together studio to that joint, that's for sure.
So how did you benefit from mixing there? Was it because of Tchad or...
I've kind of talked with him on and off for the last few years and the original plan was when I heard he was going to speak at the Tape Op convention, I thought I'd somehow get him over to Minneapolis to mix our record, but then he said he wasn't going to do the conference and that it'd actually be cheaper if we came out to England and did it there. He said he'd talk to whomever to try to get us a deal on the rate. It was still expensive but we did it in only five days. I guess it was a week where it wasn't so busy there. I think he bent the rules a little to make it work out, but I don't want to get anyone in trouble...
But if he likes the music I am sure people will go out of their way to do it.
Right. I explained that we are on an independent label [Kranky] and we sell only so many records and that we spend only so much money on making a record. He said he could work with that. But yeah, I'm a big fan of him so it was kinda cool.
So what did you intend for the album to sound like, having Tchad on board to mix? I read a lot about his recording methods, but what about his mixing style?
Well for one, it would have been interesting even more to have him as a producer, as he does things like use ratty guitars during tracking and saying, "Let's put this shaker here" on the second verse kind of thing. But, it was interesting doing it this way — he actually said when we went to track to over-track. He said if we have an idea for something, whether we're sure it's going to work or not, to go ahead and track it so that when we mix we'll have options.
More is better than less.
Kind of "more is more", actually.
Right. Because he's probably used to doing 48+ track albums that he's been doing for almost 20 years whereas people on our level are kind of like used to maximizing 16 tracks efficiently.
Yeah. Originally, I was saying, "Let's keep this simple." I was interested in doing it on 1" 8-track, which is kind of fun because it would have been a challenge to get everything pared down. And he was like, "No, no, no. Do it on 24 - do a lot of stuff and we'll pick and choose." I was surprised — with the mixing — you know, he had the SansAmp and the cheap compressors that he was abusing and weird stuff like that — which I knew about him by reading articles and stuff. All of that came into play and it was interesting because I thought it might not have been that different if he had tracked it because it seems to me, at least by the way he was mixing, that he was working with basic clean tracks and that his "thing" was in the mixing. The first time I met him, (the guys from Soul Coughing introduced me to him while I was in L.A. for something) there was a lot of funky things going on — tubes with mics going into them and weird keyboards. But now it seems to me he takes whatever is on the track and kinda messes with it. I was really surprised to see how much time he actually spent with EQ and stereo placement — it seemed to be the thing that took the most fine-tuning — getting everything out of the way from each other.
Your sound seems to be sort of built-in — you have a lot of spatiality to your own guitars as it is.
As far as stuff that Tchad's ever done, I think the thing that's going to make it different for people who follow what he does, is that he still used all the ambient tracks we had, and they're quite spacious reverb-wise because of the room. So it's weird to hear this recording that at times is distinctly Tchad Blake but at the same time has this reverb going on. It's odd because he's, in the past, built his sound pretty much on an anti-reverb thing. [laughs] I thought he'd immediately shut down all the ambient tracks and not use them but he ended up using them quite a bit. It's kind of weird.
Did you use sampling at all on this new album?
Pretty much everything is a natural sound. For example, on the song "Amazing Grace", we close- mic'd a piano and kinda just banged on it along to the previous rhythm track. It sounds like a tank sneaking up on you. I guess some would think it's a manipulated sample because it's so foreign sounding. There were a few things that Tchad manipulated so much in the mix that they ended up becoming whole new sounds. It was usually some sort of distortion. On "John Prine" there is a bell and then a distorted echo of the bell that sounds like a whole other instrument coming in.
