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On an unusually cold and rainy Pacific Northwest winter day I found myself driving up I-5 to Olympia, WA. After narrowly escaping death from a couple of speeding 18-wheelers, I pulled into downtown and gave Justin Trosper a call. He told me that his house, which doubles as Mag Rec One studio, is a little hard to find and that I should go to Vern Ramsey's home. After meeting Vern we followed a series of twisting country roads, eventually ending on a one-lane dirt trail out in the middle of some barren fields. Once we reached our destination, a decrepit looking farm house half covered by overgrown trees, I felt like I was witnessing one of the great secrets of rock. Justin greeted us, and after brewing some coffee, we headed down a dark set of stairs to the basement studio. Nothing fancy, just a towering stack of speaker cabinets, a couple of Sunn heads, a beat-up drum kit and a lot of bare concrete. Justin opened a narrow door in the corner of the room and said, "This is it," revealing a tiny smoke filled room with a lot of funky looking recording gear and a couple dozen photographs of 20th century composers on the walls. This is the site where Unwound has spent the better part of the past year self producing their new record Leaves Turn Inside You. The interview was conducted with Justin (guitar and vocals for Unwound and Replikants), Vern (bass and vocals for Unwound and Long Hind Legs), and Brandt Sandeno (electronics and drums for Replikants and original Unwound drummer).
When did you begin recording yourselves?
Justin: Winter of 97/98. Replikants and Long Hind Legs on a Tascam. That was at the old house with different equipment. We began recording here about a year ago. Vern: As soon as we were finished putting up the walls, which was March of last year. In fact, the guy who helped us get set up came here to an empty room, and by the end of the day we were getting drum sounds.
Did you have an electrician put in the wiring?
Justin: The guy who helped us build the walls kind of knows everything, so he put in a ground.
Vern: Put everything on two different circuits. We still need to put the live room on a separate circuit though.
So the toaster oven doesn't come through the guitar amps?
Vern: I don't really notice that too much.
Justin: We both get a weird knocking thing though. That's the ghost. It starts knocking on the wall, and then through our amps.
Was there a murder here?
Vern: We haven't figured that out yet.
Justin: No, but its not a malevolent one. It just likes to play funny little tricks.
So why record yourselves? After doing six albums with Steve Fisk why take this approach?
Justin: We learned a lot by working with Fisk and Vern already had some equipment which we wanted to set up. Not necessarily to record an Unwound record, just to use. But then it came time to start thinking about a new one and we all wanted to create different circumstances.
Vern: Originally we were planning on recording basic ideas so we would have a better idea of what to do when we went to a big studio, but the longer we did that the more we realized how it was all coming together.
Justin: Yeah, and this way we could spend as long as we want recording without having to worry about cost. And do things we had talked about for years. Then it expanded into, "Hey, we can record anything, any band, blah-blidy-blah," and the whole production aspect is under our control.
Vern: And instead of paying someone a bunch of money and only having a record done, this way we can end up with a studio as well.
How does recording yourselves affect the creative process? Being in your own home, and being able to work as long as you want, does it affect the music?
Justin: Definitely. We can record ideas, give it a few days, and then decide if something isn't working. This way we have a lot more time to filter out the bad ideas. [laughs]
Brandt: You think a lot more about permanence when your not in this kind of situation. You feel like everything has to be done before you go to the studio, whereas working here you can be a lot more contemplative and not feel pressured. There is always the possibility of approaching something in a totally different way.
Vern: We would let things sit for a couple weeks and then listen back to them which is a total luxury.
Justin: Normally that's only for people with a million dollar budget! But now that technology is so available, with digital recording and everything, it's easier for people to do it themselves.
Brandt: You can surprise yourself more too. There have been a lot of situations where I didn't know something could sound so good. It's possible to totally expand your horizons and get a good sounding song. You just have to use your ears.
So is the new Unwound material more pieced together?
Justin: Its almost the same [guitar, bass, and drums] but then we could add to it.
But it wasn't like lay down one riff and then come back later and add in some other idea?
Justin: There are only a couple like that. We actually wanted to do more that way, but we kept writing new songs. I mean its already a double album, did we want a quadruple? [chuckles]
Vern: Now that this is done we will probably do more of the patched together thing in the future. More orchestrated.
Justin: Getting a taste of it, its a really fun way to write. That's how we did the Replikants record — just lay one thing down, listen to it, and figure out how to make it into a song. Especially after playing in punk rock bands for years.
Brandt: It can be really liberating!
Vern: There is one song on the new record, "One Lick Less", where we just had a guitar part and then built from there. I don't think you can even hear the original part except at the beginning of the song.
Justin: Yeah, that's the most "studio" one. A lot of it is mix down too. I don't know how we are going to pull it off live. [laughs] You know, we're getting the backing chorus, a guy playing lyre, the bongo guy.
So how do you know when a song is complete? It seems like by having an unlimited amount of time it would be hard to know when a song was done.
Justin: Well, working on an 8-track is kind of a limitation.
It kept things from getting out of hand?
Justin: [laughs] No, it didn't do that! But at a point a song would become so dense that one of us would just say, "Stop, that's enough already." I mean we could have kept going, but you wouldn't have been able to hear anything anymore.
Brandt: I think it's a good thing to have limitations. It forces you to communicate more. I used to think this was a cheesy way to write songs, like Lennon/McCartney or something, but now I realize that's the way you make a recording sound good.
Justin: If we could take a time machine back ten years, and we were little miniature people eaves dropping on our conversations now we would be absolutely appalled. But now we can articulate our ideas better and communicate them to each other.
One thing I noticed on the new record is how different the drums sound in relation to the guitars. They are less like big rock drums and more homemade sounding.
Justin: Some of the drum sounds that come out of big studios sound really unnatural.
Brandt: Yeah, our ears have been trained to think that is how drums should sound on a rock record. Which is fine, but I think these guys used the limitations of the 8-track to their advantage. Getting interesting sounds rather than, ahh, hmm...
Justin: Killer sounds. [laughs]
So how were they done?
Justin: We just experimented with what we had. Sometimes just using overheads, or a mic in the middle of the room. Other times micing the whole kit up tight. Phil Ek [Tape Op #29] and Kip Beelman helped some too, and they had their own ideas. We didn't move the mics around much, but they did.
How did you guys deal with Vern's bass sound?
Vern: It was actually easier here, and I don't know why. I think we got better bass sounds here then anywhere else which is pretty amazing. I just used my same live sound, and it just worked. Some songs I plugged straight into the board.
Justin: We used the kick drum mic, the D112, on his cab and it was perfect sounding.
Did you baffle the bass amp off?
Justin: We didn't really worry about baffling too much.
Vern: Well, we only have one baffle. [laughs] Justin: We used the bass cabinet as a baffle! [more laughs] We did a couple songs with Vern in the control room, me in the laundry room, and Sara in the main room. And a few others with Sara up on the main floor of the house by herself. One song we did the drums by themselves.
Did you use Steve Fisk's help on any of this?
Justin: Me and Brandt went up to his house to record keyboards for a couple days. We just brought the 8-track up to Seattle with us, and he has a bunch of keyboards. Just amazing collection, which is real nice. We talked about mixing with Fisk, but decided to rent a mixdown deck from Avast and do it here. Just us. We went from half inch to half inch, which if anything sounds better.
After working with Fisk for so many years did you feel prepared recording by yourself?
Justin: I think so. The only things we weren't prepared for were all the little technical things. I mean it all felt very natural, Vern would be sitting in the control room manning the board while I would be doing guitar. The same as we have been doing for years.
Vern: Plus, we used a lot of bands as guinea pigs before we started! I'm glad we did that because at first it would take forever just to track three songs which is a pain in the ass. Things wouldn't be plugged in right, or just some technical thing that we wouldn't know.
Justin: I would be staring at the mixing board trying to figure out what button to push to get sound to come out of the speakers. [chuckles] It would be a half an hour of me pushing buttons! [laughs]
Vern: Then I would realize the master volume was turned off!
But you're beyond that now, right.
Vern: Well, that still happens. [more laughs] Last week I couldn't figure out why no sound was coming out of the monitors, and then I noticed the power amp was turned off!
It seems to me that with each record Unwound tries to change the sonic quality of the music. Is this important to the band?
Justin: Hmmm.
For example, New Plastic Ideas is a very different sounding record from the others.
Justin: I think Fisk has a lot to do with that. I mean he knows what he's doing, and after hearing our material he would figure out an appropriate direction to go.
Vern: I think we got to trust his ideas more as we went along. Our first album we just wanted to play live and be a good-sounding punk rock band. But then we became more open to doing things in the mix, or overdubbing, or letting him play keyboards.
Brandt: It was pretty funny when Justin and I went to his house to record some stuff and he yelled at us saying we should have been doing this five years ago. "Why don't you listen to me?!" [laughs]
Justin: Yeah, it's true. He was just shaking his head like,"So now you're finally catching up to me."
Brandt: "And you're recording yourself!" [laughs]
But it seems like each record has been building up to this.
Justin: Yeah. We are just getting more insane. Everything sounds good now. Every instrument in the world has some quality.
Vern: Even the hand drum, but we still haven't used the rainstick yet.
Justin: We've used everything except the rainstick. Fisk has been trying to get us to use it on a record for years.
Vern: He always brings his own rainstick to the studio. He has this really huge one and every time we've gone to the studio he says, "I've still got the rainstick," and we're like, "Thanks Steve."
Justin: He sits there cackling about hippies in Olympia and he's the one with a rainstick! Yeah! Back to the question, I think it is really a matter of time. On the first record we had three days, then four.
Vern: On New Plastic Ideas we had six days, Challenge For A Civilized Society was done in thirteen.
Justin: Yeah. We doubled it up, and on the new one it was only two years! [big laughs] Unwound's glorious, indulgent behavior!
Vern: It was really about seven months.
Justin: And if you whittled that down to actual recording it was still quite a bit, but most of the basic tracking was down in about two weeks. And we mixed it in two weeks. Actual working time was about two months. I don't know why it took two years! [laughs]
There is a lot more attention to vocals on the new record. What prompted the change?
Justin: Yeah, there isn't a single song without effected vocals. I'm just more into that now. We really wanted to do something interesting with this record, and not just repeat ourselves
Brandt: From helping on the record I can see how these ideas are growing from earlier projects like Long Hind Legs.
Were you approaching the vocals more in the way you use keyboards? As a textural device?
Justin: I think that's how its always been, but now it's more articulate. We've never been into using a pop mix. We try to have all the sounds even.
Vern: The vocals are definitely more upfront on this record, but they are effected too. That way we can bring them up without having them stand out too much.
Justin: There are at least two tracks of vocals on each song, which we've never done before. There's pretty much everything except a tuba. [laughs] We used delayed vocals on "Terminus," and a sampler on some others.
Vern: Dr. Sample!
Justin: I think it's something we learned from Fisk. To highlight the strongest element of the song whether it's a bassline, guitar part, or vocal melody.
Vern: It came naturally from hearing the songs so much. Every time we would set up a rough mix to do an overdub we would begin by focusing on the strongest part. I think we are all a little more selfless on this record. We weren't so much like,"Turn up the bass, I can't hear myself." We took much more of a group approach.
Justin: Less sonic battles. [laughs] For the vocals we began by using the mics we have here, but then Calvin Johnson [Tape Op #32] let us borrow his Neumann U67, and that just blew me away. With it we recorded the best vocal sound we could, and then tweaked it in the mix. I did record some vocals inside of a washing machine though. That was the only really wacky thing I did. Otherwise we just went for a clean sound.
Brandt: The amazing thing about that mic is how true it is to your actual voice. It really captures the warmth and presence, and you don't have to worry about fixing the sound with EQ.
What other mics do you really like?
Justin: We don't have a big crazy selection, but the Audix D4 is really cool for bass. And the Sennheiser 421 for guitar. Actually what we used the most are the Audio Technica Pro 37Rs, which sound great on guitar. We also used them for overheads, and vocals. We don't have a lot of stuff. Mostly just weird random things. The generosity of some of our friends really helped us out a lot.
Any projects on the horizon?
Justin: Brandt and I are beginning a new Replikants album which should be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot more producing, which I'm really into. In the last couple years I feel like I'm understanding how songs work through arrangements a lot better. I'm not a real technical person though, I mean we're total science posers. All these guys [points to portraits of John Cage, Xenakis, et al. covering the walls] are rolling over in their graves right now!
