Phil Elvrum | TapeOp

Phil Elvrum is the man behind The Microphones, one of the coolest- sounding bands/recording projects out there. He records at Dub Narcotic all the time.

How did you get in- volved with Dub Narcotic Studios?

I first came to Olympia, Washington, to record with D+, this band that I play the drums with — back then the studio was in Calvin's basement. That was where I met Calvin and got invaded with Olympia. That was early '97 and it was in the summer of '97 that they moved into this new space. It was a lot different back then, I think it was totally empty. They recorded the Halo Bender's record, The Rebel's Not In, during the Yo-Yo a Go-Go that summer. They rented a 16-track, 'cause until then it was just 8-track. It was pretty cramped in his basement, there was all this equipment. I moved to Olympia in Sept. of '97, and Calvin just gave me a key to this room. Like, "Do you want to record in my studio all the time?" So I kind of moved in. It's kind of like Calvin's home studio. I don't think anyone has ever paid to have a recording session here other than making me cookies or taking me out to dinner.

All the equipment you guys have at Dub Narcotic came from Calvin and money made from K?

He finds a lot of stuff and crazy places for really cheap. I don't know, it's pretty mysterious. There's a lot of stuff from school sales and amplifiers from the US Army, Boeing surplus sales. It's pretty mysterious, I just record here.

Do you just show up and there's a new piece of equipment then?

Well sometimes, yeah, but we keep in touch about what's going on with the stuff. Things are getting fixed... Larry Crane came up and showed us how to calibrate the 16-track and showed us how to work everything.

How many problems have you run into with the MCI?

Well, before Larry came, it was doing some crazy stuff like not stopping, but mostly the shuttle controls were really crazy and annoying. Track 15 doesn't record all the time and some of the meters are kind of sketchy. But you know, I can deal with that, just use track 15 as a talk back channel, the board only has 16 channels anyway. I was so used to recording on 8-track, in Anacortes and here for two years. So when the 16-track came, I was like, "That is so ridiculous, who needs 16 tracks?" I just bounced down on my 8-track, but now I'm really into the 16- track. I do a lot of bouncing on the 16-track. Do like 12 guitars or pianos and bounce it down to get the Wall of Sound, one instrument at a time.

What's your usual set-up for recording yourself and others?

When I'm recording myself, I bring all the instruments over here [by the mixer] so that I can push the buttons and set the levels. When Calvin and I've recorded bands we set them up over there. I like to use the room a lot, like setting up drums in different places when I have a helper. I've gotten to the point of running the mic all the way over to the piano [15-20 feet away] and headphones — I just set the mic and point it towards the piano and turn it up and instead of headphones I just turn the speakers up really loud, and just play really loud.

And you don't experience a delay?

Oh there's a delay and the levels are messed up because I didn't set it, I just cranked. I really like the sound of it though. Layering four tracks of that gives you a crazy wash of tone, it doesn't sound like a piano anymore... it sounds like nothing, a totally new instrument.

What kind of mics do you have in stock?

There's a Neumann U-67, which is the standard nice mic here that I usually use for everything, and there's a bunch of different mics. There are these weird little Altec condensers that smell really interesting. Whenever I open the box, it reminds me of a certain cupboard in my grandma's house when I was six, the cereal cupboard. It's the craziest reference. I wonder what the smell is? It's so mysterious. My friend Karl was using one of the Altecs and he put a little tag on it that says "butter". It's a weird little chapstick mic. We also have some Sennheiser condensers that are really nice for drums and acoustic guitar and an AKG D12.

What's the strangest technique that you used when recording? Any cool tricks?

I constantly experiment. There's a lot of weird stuff that I've done. I recorded this band called The Lowdown from Santa Cruz, California. They're my favorite band. But it was so fun recording with them because they totally operate on that esthetic of just making it sound as messed up as possible. We recorded all the vocals on that record through the P.A. they tour with, which is totally broken. The speaker is just this one big speaker and then the mic we used was this garage sale mic with the cover ripped off so it was just this diaphragm. It's broken in such a way that it's torn and the only way to get sound is to actually put your mouth on it and move the diaphragm manually with your tongue. So we recorded a lot of the vocals through that P.A. — we had it blaring with a mic set up across the room. It's hard to think of examples, I mean, I go through the tapes and list them off, but pretty much on every song there's something non-traditional.

How does Calvin record differently than you?

I've heard him mix things in a dub style and there are some pretty fucked up dub things that they do. Like you press rewind right in the middle of the song, or just pressing stop on the mix down deck and then record at a different place, just raw editing like that. Or turn the bass drum up or the bass up in a really blatant clumsy fade. I really love that and it seems that Calvin has done a lot of mixing like that.

What's your favorite piece of outboard gear?

I use the Space Echo a lot. I consider it a member of the band. There is one of those interesting smelling Altec mics that is an omni-directional condenser mic that I've recorded a bunch of songs with, just that mic, I'll bring the instruments over here and just use that one mic and on a whole drum set it will sound amazing. I have more of an affection for different instruments, I guess.

It seems that you have a bunch of different instruments and gear here. What all do you have and how did it get here?

Well, all the gear Calvin picks up, and we got some interesting stuff like this old AM radio compressor, and all the settings are for AM radio. So I guess if we ran something through there it would sound like AM radio. Which is nice. We have a four channel mixer that's broken. It looks so Playskool-like. It would be so dreamy to get this mixer working. I've always wanted to do a Phil Spector style recording, just four mics that go to a one track or two track. There's this one track recorder that we have the amplifier for and it's a one track — I actually saw the same recorder in an old photo of Elvis in Sam Phillip's Sun Studios. In the background of one photo there was this same exact one and I always wanted to mix an album in mono to that one track. All the instruments belong to different people, it comes and goes. There's this drum machine with fourteen tape loops, and you move the tape head across to select one and on each tape head there's three tracks so you can like stick it in between two loops and have each beat going at the same time. But each loop is a person playing the drums in the '40s. It's just this mysterious old machine. It's connected to this big speaker that just distorts like crazy. This sounds like how I like to record drums. It's a weird sized tape, it's not quite 1/2" so it would be hard to record over the drum loops with new ones. But the tone of the recordings on there are already so amazing, and a lot of the beats are these weird salsa beats and there's also a speed control on there. So I'm pretty satisfied with the beats on there. It needs some soldering though. This is a pump organ. This old man in Anacortes gave it to me — he had an extra one. I think there are some leaks in the bellows. It's not as powerful as it could be, but it has these crazy high frequencies that instantly create this eerie effect. But a lot of this is just stuff that people already have and they just leave it here.

Do you find it hard to share this space in Olympia with this collection of artists?

This place is such an amazing resource — most of the time no one is in here and I can do what I want — so how can I complain when somebody else is in here? It's really great that Calvin looks at this room as an empty space for anyone to come in. It's never really a conflict, in a big way.

What about all the graffiti on the walls? Do people add to it when they use the space or record here?

Well actually, all the graffiti in here is from 1949. I think this building was a storage facility or something before Dub Narcotic moved in, but in '49 Olympia High School had a dance in here because their gymnasium was being rebuilt. It was this one dance and the kids did the room up with paints. It's really cool.

Any last words of advice for home recordists out there?

Man that was a good question. I wish I had something to say. Try putting the mic somewhere else, besides where it's supposed to go, instead of putting it in front of the thing.