[This article was printed in a very condensed form in print issue #98 of Tape Op.]
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When we scheduled this interview, you told me you were going to "write it down on your blackboard."
Yes. [laughs] I've always used a blackboard — an actual board with chalk. I keep it right in the middle of the kitchen so I can't miss it. My approach in the studio is similar in certain ways. Very basic and very elementary.
Before you started Stereolab you were making some pretty aggressive noise music.
When I was 15 some friends and I had a band called Unkommuniti. We did what was called "power electronics" back then. The sound was sort of a cross between Whitehouse or Nurse with Wound. It was improvisational, mostly synths and feedback. At the time those bands were creating the most exciting music I'd heard, and Unkommuniti was my teenage way of reproducing it.
Your next band, McCarthy, had some renown on a very different track. How did that come about?
McCarthy was a group of four people, of which I was only one. I didn't make the music like I did in Stereolab. [Singer] Malcolm [Eden] and [bass player] John [Williamson]'s tastes were geared more towards pop. For me, McCarthy was an adventure into pop, because I didn't know much about that kind of music. For me it was very eye-opening to explore the pop music of our time; as well as what had come before.
Were you working on that chaotic, textural noise stuff at the time?
There was a period in the beginning where it crossed over and I was doing both groups simultaneously, but that stopped after about a year. The early McCarthy sound was more abstract and included electronics. But gradually it morphed, until we were playing these very quick, sharp pop songs. That went on until the end of '89 when Malcolm decided to stop. That was fine, because I wanted to get back to doing the music I was hearing in my mind. I knew it wouldn't have been possible with the members of McCarthy. They had their own thing, so their tastes wouldn't stretch to include it.
Stereolab is very different from either of those projects. Did you suddenly become drawn to a new set of influences?
Well, in the early and mid-'80s I was a big fan of Krautrock music — like Faust, Neu! and Can. There was a great shop where I lived in L.A. called Recommended Records. They had The Residents and everything! When McCarthy split I was exhausted. I'd been in two bands, and I didn't want to do "just another band." I felt there had to be a reason. It was about a year before I began to think of something that was new to my ears. I started going back and listening to some of this old stuff that moved me. In a sense I was looking for a way of combining the experimental with the commercial. I wanted to do something new and different with music. The idea was a combination of naïve pop melodies melded with very simple rock minimalism. When we started, that early stuff did sound quite different. It played to the proficiencies of the band, which was not very "musical," in a sense. None of us were great musicians, especially in the beginning, so it wasn't a technical thing. Our innovation was to strip everything back.
Where did the love of the Farfisa organ come from?
In the beginning, the Farfisa was the creator of the basic Stereolab sound. Eventually we stopped using it as much, because it's so identifiable. But it's got this natural distortion that's just... heavy. It covers up a lot of things! That's probably why it sounded so good. [laughs] It added a color and dimension to the band that we were looking for [at the time]. Bass, guitar and drums sounded reedy on their own. I tend to have that reaction to things, "Stop! That's it! This is the right sound." We had bought a Farfisa Bravo in the beginning, which was the cheapest Farfisa going. We got it at a charity shop. We got it home and started to play with it and realized the sound was great. But it's so primitive that if you played anything more than a major chord, the harmonics would begin to break up. For me what sounded good were two-note chords. That Farfisa didn't do anything else, so it dictated the sound. That guitar and the Farfisa chords were basically the sound of all those early Stereolab records.
On those early records everything has a very dense texture. The arrangements started to open up after the first couple of albums.
I think the reason the sound changed is because we were gradually rehearsing less and less, and our writing and recording process got closer and closer together. In the early days I would write the songs and bring them to the band. We'd rehearse them, play them and try to make them feel big and exciting. But by the time of Mars Audiac Quintet the ideas I'd bring in were so minimal that they were barely there. All the songs were pretty much constructed in the studio and that had a big effect on the sound. That's how it changed from the sound of a live band in the studio, to an experiment in juxtaposition of sounds.
I think that becomes apparent on the fourth album, Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
Well, the main trigger for us was that after Mars Audiac Quintet I had one year where I couldn't write. From '94 into '95 — it was a bad year. I think I wrote two songs. I couldn't go on anymore with the sound that we had. Then, something happened. We were asked to do a cover version of a song, "ABC," by The Godz for a compilation album [Godz is Not a Put-On]. In the middle of the song there was this two-second little bass riff and I thought, "Maybe I can grab onto that." That's pretty much where I got into the idea of grabbing onto loops of these accidental sounds. I had a way to get out of the problem I'd had. It's similar to the minimalist layering we were doing as a band. It's still a very simple approach but, instead of writing in a linear way, it's more circular. By the combination of simple loops, you're building up this complex sound.
What effect did that have on your work in the studio?
This is what gave me the idea to get the sound we used on Emperor Tomato Ketchup. It was written quickly because I was so inspired by the idea of getting the band playing loops. We were excited by a few people who seemed to be taking a similar approach, like Sun Ra and Tortoise. We also wanted to work with John [McEntire of Tortoise]. So half of the tracks we recorded with John and half we did at Blackwing Studios, which was our normal studio at that time. John had a massive influence on the sound, and for me it was a new, very exciting period. Going away to somewhere like Chicago to record with these new ideas in your head — it was fantastic to work with him. And that sound gradually developed across the next albums.
But you weren't using computers yet?
Well, the new thing with the next album, Dots and Loops, was that it was the first time we ever used the computer in the studio. There are no samples on that record; it's all us playing those loops, live as a band, together, in real time. On Dots and Loops we started using samples on the computer; but they're still samples of us playing. We had six weeks to record, and after two weeks we were done with pretty much everything. We thought, "Man this is crazy," because it went so fast. But then we had to edit everything. We realized in the studio that with a computer, you can record quite fast in small groups. But then you have to edit it, and loop it. So that was another two weeks. The sound of the computer massively influenced the sound of that record. It changed the way that we wrote songs and everything. The way it can divide a loop makes you hear things in a different way. It was a great discovery, for us and for John. But after the album came out I didn't want to do it that way again. To me, an LP can suffer from too much looping or artificial playing. So when it came to do the next record, we went back to creating loops that we could play live as a band, without sampling ourselves on the computer. If you play a loop as a band in real time, it's different from looping a performance with technology. There's a swing, or a feel, to it, which for me is more exciting than looping one performance.
Can you tell us about how you met John McEntire and Jim O'Rourke? They left a big mark on the sound in the same way that Joe Watson would help shape your later records.
When we're recording an album with John or Jim, it's more a matter of collaborating than them simply being producers. They both made music I liked. I was familiar with Jim's name even from the electronic days. He's a few years younger than me, so he was entering the electronic music field and releasing cassettes around the same time I was getting out of it. I had a couple of his records already when Stereolab played in Chicago around '93. He was playing in a support band with Jim O'Rourke! John had his Farfisa and his synths; Jim was playing a Farfisa Duo Compact. So we had the pleasure of having three Farfisas on stage at one point! We got to talking about gear at first. The first Tortoise album had come out, and a new Jim O'Rourke record had recently been released as well. We made a connection and stayed friends. It wasn't until a couple of years later that we worked with them; John first and then with Jim. Jim is basically, well, unique. He's got a way of approaching things, which is very unusual and interesting. He grabs onto the music and changes it.
Can you tell us about how creating the arrangements works?
