Neutral Milk Hotel began in the early 90's as a 4 track cassette project by Jeff Mangum. Since then, he's released a couple of albums on Merge records (On Avery Island, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea) and assembled a "band" to take the show on the road. We interviewed Jeff after a Neutral Milk Hotel show at the Portland rock dive, Satyricon. Despite having been booted from the stage after a scant forty minutes due to club scheduling problems, Jeff was still up for talking Tape Op trash. After assuring us we weren't bugging him, we got underway with a few questions.
Have you had a long day, Jeff?
Long day... Don't sweat it, you're not pestering me. I really like your zine a lot.
Thank you. Well, these are the questions I was thinking of. Your first single was the Cher Doll Records one, is that right?
Yeah.
I really like That. I heard That whenever it came out, someone sent it to me to review. And I was thinking that you're, even still, oriented towards recording being really separate from live. So I wanted to head in that direction with questions, as far as your band being a band. Like on the new record, how many of the people who played with you tonight appeared on that record?
All of them. Jeremy plays drums on the album, Scott plays all the horns, Julian plays accordion and saw, and Lauren plays the silver saxophone and the xitherphone.
So you headed up to Robert's [Schneider of the Apples In Stereo] house in Denver to do the recording?
Yeah. The whole band approaches recording in a very...recording is such a magical thing, it's fun to see the songs grow and take shape as you're working on them and not get too caught up in trying to worry about exactly how they are live. The whole fun in recording is finding the little magic keys to the songs.
Were you playing stuff off the new album live before you went to the studio?
We played 'Ghost' a couple times, and that was it. Cuz we got the band together up in New York City after ...Avery Island [NMH's first full length] came out, and then we toured for a while. Then Jeremy went to Chicago, Scott went to Austin, Julian stayed in Long Island to start his album on his own, in his grandmother's basement. I went to Athens and started working on some of the songs for the next record. And then Jeremy flew down to Athens for five days and that's where we worked up 'Ghost,' in the garage, and then he went home. The other songs we did after he got back from Chicago, we worked on them right before we went to make the record and then we worked on some of the stuff in the studio.
Just worked it up a little bit and then recorded it?
Uh-huh.
What did you record on this time, did you use the eight track?
Yeah, eight track.
You did the first one on a four track, right?
Fostex four track, reel-to-reel.
Damn. Didn't he have the eight track at that point, when you were out there for Avery Island?
Yeah, we couldn't afford the tape.
That's a wild reason. An extra eighty bucks or something.
Well, Robert's been eating rice and beans for both records. We basically ended up living off a credit card for half the album. And plus I was only used to cassette four track at that time, so it was a step for me into something still comfort- able.
And they can sound great. Has it been nice working with eight?
Yeah it's great.
How'd you hook up with Robert in the first place?
I met Robert in third grade, in Louisiana. Will from Olivia Tremor Control [Tape Op #17] I met in seventh grade, and he moved away when he was eighteen. See, we were always trying to get out of Louisiana, we always knew it was a place to leave. We were always surprised at how many people who lived there didn't have the same idea that we did. So he ended up moving to the Virgin Islands, think- ing he was going to sit on the beach and drink martinis and write Hawaiian music. And he ended up homeless on the beach, broke. His plane ticket was round-trip, so he went back to Miami and called our friend Lisa in Athens, who went and picked him up. So one of our friends had actually broken free of Ruston so we all flooded to Athens immediately. I ended up moving, though I've moved back to Athens three times, this is my third move back.
Where did you move between?
Denver, Seattle, and New York City.
I thought you had lived in Seattle, like when the single was done or something?
I did the single in Athens, then went to Seattle, found out about Cher Doll records and sent her a tape. So at that time you were four tracking at home?
Yeah, working at some crappy theater job. Giving away free popcorn. Constantly.
To friends, or anybody?
Anybody who looked interesting. Some guy would buy ten bucks worth of food, give me a ten-dollar bill, and I'd give him ten bucks back in change and say thank you. [everyone laughs] They'd look at me completely confused. And then everybody quit and there were three fifteen year-old kids there that were asking me how to pop the popcorn and look- ing to me for guidance and I couldn't take it so I left. Yeah, I lived in Seattle for a while.
Before that you'd been four-tracking, when you lived in Athens, right?
Well, I started four-tracking when I was around sixteen. And before that I had a little York stereo with the left and the right input and a little K-Mart mic. It had a double tape deck so I'd record one track on the left speaker, and then put the tape in there and hit play and record the right speaker and you had two tracks.
Yeah, we all start with something like that and it just goes to hell from there. On that first single, that has the most distinctive guitar sound I'd heard in a long time and that was the first thing that blew me away. It sounds like you just plugged into a distortion pedal and plugged straight in. Is that how you were getting that sound?
That was the Fostex X-18 that has a remix button on it which feeds, if you're remixing on track one, it'll feed it into track two and back into track one. So I plugged the guitar into the four track and it's sup- posed to be on "line," but if you pop it [the input level switch] into "mic," the signal is really hot. And then you put it through the remix and the whole thing just starts looping on itself. Plus I had a gui- tar with a pickup that was really hot.
So you just did it straight in, no effects or nothing? That was my favorite guitar sound in a long time, it kinda blew me out of the water. I was starting to four-track, living up here in a basement, and that single made me feel good about doing stuff on my own. It was great. You had really simple drums, sounded like just a snare and a ride cymbal.
And a floor tom, I think.
Yeah. Just really simple, probably one mic?
One really crappy mic. I think it was a K-Mart mic, one of the seven dollar microphones you can buy, plas- tic with a plastic mic stand you can pop on there.
I just found one of those at R5D3, this really strange store that has a lot of radio surplus and weird shit. It's the best place to find weird things.
Do they have any Space Echoes?
Yeah, I wish.
I really want a Space Echo really bad. [into tape recorder]: If anyone reading this has a Space Echo, please let me know.
Contact Jeff now. I'll take one too. [laughs] So after that, were you still four-tracking up to pre-Avery Island, doing stuff on your own? When you're writing songs, you're putting them together on tape?
No, all the songs are just in my head. Now I just record shit for the fun of it. Unlistenable noise. But now I have a quarter-inch eight track.
Oh, cool. What kind?
Fostex, mid-eighties model.
Do you have a mixing board?
I borrowed one, I haven't bought one yet.
What are your plans for recording stuff in the future? Recording with Robert?
Hell, yeah.
You said he's listed as producer. How do you guys interact? You have the songs in your head, all the musicians, you're there, Robert's there, you've got a tape deck...
Start with the drums. We get there, sit around in his living room playing records. And I'll pick up a guitar and say, "Hey man, these are some of the songs that are going to be on the record, will you tell me what you think?" Sometimes I'll play him songs I'm not so sure about. Robert is a really beautiful person and I don't understand where he gets all his stamina from. I'm so amazed he can engulf himself in the record as we're making it, from basically two in the afternoon until three in the morning. He wakes me up and says "I'm going to the studio to play the piano for a couple hours," and I'd show up around two.
Is it fun?
It's a blast. He wakes you up all freaked out, "I heard these sounds in my head, I know how we can get this done, I had this dream and I heard all these sounds, and I figured out how we can make it sound like that." He'd say, "I love you, I love you, I love you," kiss me on the head, go "wake up, coffee is downstairs, see you in the studio in two hours." "Okay Robert!" So it's just really great. They gave me a room to live in, and he's got all his books on Eastern religion and philosophy to look at, so it's a pretty cool experience.
What is songwriting like for you? Do you have a bunch of ideas and then say, OK, it's time to sit down and flesh them out, or are you writing constantly, like you finish a song and then move on?
It's hard to say. They all sort of morph themselves into different shapes. Sometimes I can't remember where they got started. Different pieces will cram into each other. But I'm constantly writing, there's constantly words that come into my head that sit there a while.
Do you travel with a typewriter?
No, I pretty much keep it all in my head. Usually when I write with a typewriter it's so Dada, you can't look at it. I've written pages and pages of typewriter stuff that is such nonsense that no one could pos- sibly make any sense of it.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about the recording process?
All the little stockpile of sounds that I came up with on the four track were accidental things that happened, and then I brought those ideas and those sounds to a bigger recording situation with Robert. For me, recording is like I can sense these waves of the up and down of the music, the dynamics in the music, and I get this feeling of how things are happening musically and try to guide the songs and the albums themselves, to make the waves even and work well.
How do you communicate that with other people?
I'm surprised at how well they understand already.
They seem to be really responsive to what makes your songs work.
Yeah, we're really fortunate that we're good friends and we get along so well.
And that you're all able to be out on the road at the same time, not tied down to jobs.
Yeah, well it's rice and beans on the road. Looks like it's going to be rice and beans for life.
