After Tape Op's online editor Geoff Stanfield interviewed both Noah Lennox and longtime collaborator Pete Kember [#46] for the Tape Op Podcast about their work together, and their recent album Reset, he wanted to dig a little deeper into Noah's musical beginnings and process. Geoff dropped editor Larry Crane a line, who decided wanted to then interview Pete Kember, and catch up with all that's happened in his interesting career over the last couple of decades.
We last chatted with Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom, way back in Tape Op #46, about his years in Spacemen 3, his Spectrum and E.A.R. projects, and more. Since then, he's kept busy, including producing MGMT's Congratulations and Beach House's 7 albums, mixing Moon Duo, and producing and collaborating with Panda Bear on a number of projects, notably the recent Reset album.
We both worked on Moon Duo's record, Stars Are The Light, a few years back.
You did the recording for it?
Yeah. We tracked drums, vocals, and such to their synth tracks. Then they added to it.
I asked, "Is this record going to be a slightly different Moon Duo?" Ripley [Johnson] said, "I was thinking stoner disco." I was like, "I'm in!" He and Sanae [Yamada] were staying here, and it's a fairly psychedelic environment. Of course, we're trying to make this stoner disco. They then went and stayed at their manager's, Paul Carlin, flat. He Airbnb's a lot, so it was super neutral. They said when they listened to the music in that environment, it was shocking. Here it seems normal, but in there they were like, "What have we done?" It worked out for them. I thought that was a great record, and it was awesome to work on it, both sonically and musically.
I had fun on my end too. You're in Portugal now?
I'm in Sintra, outside of Lisbon. It wouldn't look unfamiliar to some of the places around Portland, probably. Lots of trees.
What brought you to Portugal?
I was working with Noah on the records Tomboy and then [Panda Bear Meets the] Grim Reaper. I was coming here to rehearse with him. We recorded Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper in Lisbon at Namouche Studios. It's a nice studio, with old-school gear. Neves and Neumanns. I liked the vibe here a lot. I'm not sure if every Portuguese person would necessarily agree, but many of them recognize that it's quite old-fashioned here, for different reasons. Both Portugal and Spain had fascist dictators. Both of them decided to keep their countries out of the modern world. I'm sure none of it was by design, but the spin-off was that they became a little bit of a backwater to the rest of Europe. The commercialization happened much later and at a slower rate. Whilst elsewhere one can drive down the highway and find big, modern, multi-story strip mall-type places, on the whole, it isn't like that here. The center of Lisbon doesn't have all of that. It might be starting to happen a little bit, but it's a beautiful old city.
England, where you grew up, has certainly got its problems these days.
Yeah. I left before the Brexit vote happened, and I was so happy to be away from that. I always felt more European than English. I always liked continental Europe a lot, and the short distances you travel. The culture, the language, and even the money used to change. I like the diversity and the different views.
Let's get back to something equally beautiful, like music. I'm amazed by your career. I knew Spacemen 3. In the '80s I'd listen to those records and loved those textures and the sound that your band had back then.
Thank you.
How did that shift into producing, recording, and working with others after the band broke up?
Well, for the first Spacemen 3 album, Sound of Confusion – which might be the least popular in general with people – we worked with a producer. We went to a studio and the guy was the producer. I didn't like the experience. I don't think he understood what we were trying to do. One of the biggest lessons I learned from that guy was if he thought something was right, he expected us to go with it. I think the band is always right. We can lead a horse to water, and if they don't want to drink, that's fine. In my production, I totally like to adapt to what each band or person is looking for. Everyone works differently. I did not see this in that guy. He wasn't a bad guy. Not at all. He was just more of a product of that era. After that record, when we realized the demos that we'd done were better than the re-recorded songs, we decided that we'd rather do the producing ourselves. Maybe we wouldn't be the best, but we'd always work with engineers, of course. I guess we wanted to learn through our own doing of it. Even if we fucked up, at least we were doing what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. The only time I worked with a producer, although he wasn't really a producer on the sessions [Indian Giver: Spectrum meets Cpt. Memphis], was with Jim Dickinson [Tape Op #19].
Oh, yeah. I knew Jim.
Yeah. He was a trip. He was awesome. He's Mr. Memphis, that dude. I learned a lot. Another reason why I liked producing is that I learned so much from working with different people and seeing the way they work. Him, for sure; nobody worked quite like Jim Dickinson did.
He would always say something like, "The producer's job is to finish, and basically steal it from the artist." For a year, I walked around thinking, "That's bullshit." Then one day I was on a session, and I was like, "Oh, I'm distracting someone to get what I want out of them. Jim was right."
He was such a cool dude. Such an interesting mindset. One of the things that I always repeat that he said is, "If you've got the song, pretty much any old way you record it, it'll be hard to fuck it up." It doesn't matter how much finessing we do. If the song isn't there, there is no saving it. It wasn't easy working with him, actually. He was one of the tougher people I've ever worked with. He had me in tears, at least once. But I liked the experience. We went and stayed out there on his Zebra Ranch. The whole place was a trip, with all the gear from Stax. He had seen so much of the Muscle Shoals world and being on Sun Records. The most awesome history. Playing piano on [the Rolling Stones'] "Wild Horses?" Definite points for that!
If all he'd ever done was produced Big Star's Third…
Yeah. The fact that he enabled Big Star to do those records is awesome. I'm not the biggest Big Star fan, but "Holocaust" and "Kangaroo" are some of the greatest songs ever recorded. Also, the Paris, Texas soundtrack, which he doesn't get as much credit for. Ry Cooder gets the glory, but it has a big dose of Jim Dickinson.
Memphis has its characters, that's for sure. What was your learning curve in the studio?
We always mixed our own music. I suppose I learned tricks. Working with different people and different engineers, I would always be picking up good ideas from them and different little tips and tricks. In the rearview mirror, it looks like there was some sort of career plan there, which there wasn't. [laughter] When MGMT asked me to do that record [Congratulations], it was a big moment for me. It was awesome to work with them, and I liked being in on their joke with the record company, after their massively successful [debut] album [Oracular Spectacular]. I like their way of thinking. They were relatively young at that point, but all the people that they work with were their friends. Billy Bennett was doing the engineering. He's a really smart kid, and good and generous. I guess I always knew what I was trying to do, sonically, and then slowly I found my way to doing it better and better. Finding these little tricks, like sidechaining and ducking. Cleaning up the low end on tracks that aren't really about low end. Simple things universally tend to work, particularly with bands and "band" music.
Where we need to keep elements in there to make people happy, but also have a good mix.
Yeah. Aural illusions, where we don't necessarily have to have the vocals super loud if I can clear a bit of space out of one or two elements. If it's done right, the ear doesn't detect anything. In fact, if the ear is detecting it, then I haven't done it right. These simple tricks that help improve mixes.
You've done a lot of remixes. Does that come back to inform production and mixing work?
Yeah. Sometimes when I produce, I don't mix. With a remix, they give it more rope, usually. It depends, from artist to artist, but people are clearly looking for a twist. I have my schtick, a little bit. I know I'll always be in love with tremolo. I'll always have this affection for certain fuzz tones and wah and filtered sounds. I explore sometimes and see what I can get lucky with. I try and keep it fresh. It's fun doing the remixes.
Yeah. It gives you a freedom.
Yeah. I don't like to take on that much work, because I like to be fully focused. I like to dam up my energies a little bit, so that when I go into something I've got some juice to pour right from the start. I'm not coming out of something else, where I feel I've been juiced. I'm lucky. I get asked by some cool people to do remixes, and I love it. I love working on other peoples' music. If my lifetime so far had been only working on my own music, I would be doing something else now. I could not sustain my mind only doing my thing. I like to work with other people.
Do you have a personal studio at this point?
This is where I do mixing and my own music. When I was working with Moon Duo, they came here. There are a few nice studios around here in Portugal. There's one called Black Sheep [Studios] that I use that's ten minutes from here. The rates are great, the people are great. Studio rates in Portugal are very reasonable. We were always working in fairly cheap studios back in the day, and I was never a mic technique guy. I like to work with people who are. The engineer, Guilherme Gonçalves, who I work with usually at Black Sheep, is good with that. That's what he does. Bringing different people in and working with people who have totally different skills from me – that's what I'm looking for.
How did the album Reset come about with you and Noah? It's playful!
Yeah, it is. Skippy. Hoppy. One of the big influences of that was street games, like double Dutch, skipping, hopscotch, rocking robin, and handclaps. You don't see kids do that much in many places in the world, because they've got their fucking phones in their hands, of course. It came about because I always loved music from the '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll era. I knew that there was an underexploited element of electronics in with that music. I knew from sitting playing Galaxian [arcade game] while listening to doo wop records that Galaxian and doo wop sounded awesome together, when the ships dive in! Which we actually use that on the record. It's in "Whirlpool," with the Galaxian mothership diving in.
Oh, that's funny!
When I moved here I wanted to re-experience all my records. It's a beautiful environment, and it inspired me to go through my whole lifetime of records here. I had a lot of Everly Brothers, Eddie Cochran, and these old dudes that I always loved. Buddy Holly was one of my first musical loves.
Yeah, that's beautiful music.
Again, Norman Petty, who produced a lot of that, was an awesome producer. I'm not sure what he was like in a business way, but his production ideas were awesome to all those records, which was probably a big inspiration for Joe Meek [Tape Op #100] as well.
Yeah, totally.
I'd listened to some of these records, and I realized that the intro, before it even arrived at the song, just the intro sometimes would seduce me straightaway. I wondered if it might be good to make some loops out of these and use them as a sort of energy source to build out of. I definitely knew I didn't just want to make a retro-sounding record from that era, but I did want to use all of these skippy, hand-clappy things. Doo wop records are incredibly bubble-gummy and uncool in many ways. I wanted to pour that energy into it, so I made all the loops. I didn't think Noah would be into it. I thought it might be a bit too retro for him. Luckily, it was in lockdown, which definitely gave me some extra time to be able to do all that. He wanted something to do as well, and he went through the loops and some of them inspired him. We didn't set out to make a record. Working with Noah is always a treat for me. It slowly grew. He would do a song, send it to me, and I was like, "Oh my god! What happened to Noah? He's hit another fucking peak here!" The songwriting. I would send him a loop and he'd send it back with just his vocal on it. It was like the Jim Dickinson thing; I could see we had the songs. Everything else was fun details, underlining the vibe and using highlighting pens on certain places on the track. After three or four songs came through, I was like, "We have to make this into an album!" He encouraged me and said, "I've done four songs. I've got one more I can do. Why don't you do some as well?" I said, "Singing on a record with you? Are you fucking joking dude? You're like one of the voices of your generation!" The voice of a generation meets the voice of degeneration. [laughs] I thought, "Oh, maybe this could work! There could be a contrast in this." On my album All Things Being Equal, there's a song "Just a Little Piece of Me." He had recorded a vocal on that for me. I was surprised how our voices worked together and had this slightly cosmic, almost Everly Brothers tonal meld to it. I think it's down to Noah's skill of singing with other voices.
Right.
I was like, "Okay, I'll try!" I'd just done an album [All Things Being Equal]. I got lucky that different things were happening that were focusing and inspiring during the lockdown. I managed to do some songs as well, and shazam, we had Reset.
Did you continue to pass tracks back and forth and both add to them?
I did the loops. He picked loops and wrote and arranged the song. His vocal was the arrangement of the song. He built in the verses, choruses, and middle eights. He'd said to me, at the end of Grim Reaper, "On the next album I'm going to make, I'm just going to sing and have percussion." I was like, "Oh, that's pretty cool." Whilst he didn't do that, I never forgot that he said it. I thought, "Percussion's going to be an important part of this.” I was also listening to a lot of rocksteady and ska, where they use the güiros for this constant rhythmic, grating ticking that makes the whole track sound like a well-oiled machine. I wanted to try and bring some of that in. I knew it wouldn't come out exactly the same, but I wanted to use a lot of that energy. Castanets, wood blocks, cowbell, and sleigh bells. I was trying to push all the "fun" buttons.
When I'm tracking a band session, I'm like, "No, don't pull out the percussion box! We're going to spend days trying to figure out how to add these into a drum track!"
With Noah, because of his rhythmic abilities, he's always looking for the space where nothing happens in a musical bar. I would go into Lisbon, to his studio, and I'd take all my percussion instruments in, and let him play through to see what we got. The same when we did the bass and the melodic synth parts. All the arrangements of the percussion were all done in editing. Like the hand clapping, we'd whack a load down and then I'd figure out what was useful. Maybe I'd even rearrange some rhythms a little bit or have them change through the tracks. I was listening to Dion and the Belmonts or The Raindrops, which was [songwriters] Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich's band. They had awesome clap arrangements. Simple, but cool. It was mostly done in the arranging. Then Noah came out here a couple of times and would do keys and bass. At the time, we thought a lot of it was placeholders. I'd do a keyboard and go, "I don't know how good that is, but let's keep it and let's see." I'd come back to it the next day and go, "Oh, that's fine." I find it hard working in the recording studio – on my own music particularly – that it's tough work, and it's quite an uncomfortable place to be in. I always thought it was just me and my mindset. Then I saw something David Bowie said. Someone asked him about how he knew when something was happening, that it was going off. He said, “When you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.” Whenever I had that, almost verging on panic, is when something good was happening. I was like, "Okay, that's cool. I have to go into the studio and feel in this semi-panicked state." I go back to it the next day, and I'm like, "This is great!" I also believe that if you mix, edit, write, and record, you have to wear a totally different head for it. Your mind has to be in a different place, which is why I always like working with an engineer in the studio, even though I could probably do a lot of it myself. I want someone who's in that mindset of that's what they're thinking about, and my job is to think about something else. I need to be in that mindset.
It probably alleviates some of that when working as a duo, because you can check with each other.
Yeah. Noah's very generous. I was like, "I can't believe he's doing this! This is too much fun." I said to him, "Thank you. I feel like you're indulging me." He never confirmed or denied.
After editing, how did the mixing process go?
I was always aware of Kraftwerk being very good at all keeping out of each other's way, knowing their frequency range and places within the bars. It was elegant. It makes mixing easy when you have music like that. Right from the start, we'd try and do arrangements like that. Noah would never have a bass fall at the same time as a bass drum. I shouldn't say "never," but he was always looking for the space. He always found this way around it, and it makes it easy to mix.
Everything has space when you do that.
And when you have space in the mix, effects sound twice as good. You need half as much of them, and they sound twice as good.
Oh, absolutely.
You'll get the space for reverbs and delay washes. We used the [Eventide H910] Harmonizer quite a lot with a lot of the electronic parts. Even though I'm a big modular synth dude, and my previous record [Sonic Boom's All Things Being Equal] was all built on modular synth patches, I came across the H910 when I was working with MGMT. They had one, and I loved it. It's such a beautiful-sounding piece of equipment. Finding a working one of those that you can afford is not always the easiest thing, but the plug-in that Eventide makes is awesome. I can't detect the difference. Someone said to me, "Oh, that sound that starts on "Go On;" it's from a Throbbing Gristle record, isn't it?" He played me the track, and I was like, "What? It's exactly the same sound!" It must be one of those sweet spots in the H910. If you do something a little bit wrong in the right way, it goes into this awesome mode. That's always what I'm looking for in equipment, their special little sweet spots. That's where I find joy. Back in the day, I'd ask people in the studio, "Oh, I wanted to do this and patch things this way." They'd go, "Really? Why'd you want to do that?" "Let's try it." They'd go, "That isn't usually the way that's used." I go, "Is it going to break it? How about if I pay to get it fixed if it breaks?" That way I found some nice sounds by building feedback matrices between different effects on the desk. I remember the first time I asked this guy to do this in the studio, and he just looked at me like, "Dude, what the fuck are you on?" When he heard what I did with it, he was like, "Okay. Yeah."
There's a better understanding of the history of recording equipment these days.
People always used to say, "Are you an analog or digital guy?" There are some digital effects that are the most freaky, amazing shit, and no analog gear is ever going to sound like it, and vice versa. It's all a wonderful world that we share.
