DFA/Plantain | TapeOp

Having forged his reputation as one of the founders of the Mo' Wax label (trip-hop provocateurs) in England in the late '90s and as a member of the remix team known as U.N.K.L.E., Tim Goldsworthy has had a big hand in remixes for the likes of Radiohead, The Verve, Folk Implosion, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Tortoise. But something happened on the way to the airport, because upon finishing the album Bow Down to the Exit Sign for artist/DJ David Holmes, he decided to remain in Manhattan and get busy once again. The result was the creation of The DFA with Brooklyn studio owner and drummer, James Murphy. Quintessential remixers to the stars and a record label, The DFA resides in a large three-story walkup on 13th Street, with the Plantain Recording Studio neatly tucked inside. Recent activity includes remixes for Le Tigre's "Deceptacon", BS2000's "The Scrappy" [featuring Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys] and Primal Scream's "Blood Money". Their work for Zero Zero, Radio 4 and The Rapture's "House of Jealous Lovers" was making waves in nightclubs and radio here and in the U.K. the week of this interview.

Tim, you were working with David Holmes, yet when his album was finished you stayed. What changed your mind?

Tim Goldsworthy: There were a lot of factors. First of all, I kind of fell out with David a little bit, just slightly. [I] also kind of got out of the rut I had [been in] in England, like the huge albatross of trip-hop hanging around my neck and being the programmer for hire. It wasn't very satisfying. I tried always to do what I wanted to do with the music because it's very important, because music is what I love and it had gotten to where I was just a programmer/producer for hire and doing lots of things for the money, which I'll wait another ten to 20 years for. [laughs]

James Murphy: It's a hard thing not to do.

TG: Until I've lost it and then do that kind of stuff. New York is like the mythical Mecca of all the music I was into, like from the hip-hop and the funk stuff. The idea of what New York is, musically, is basically the reason I do music. And also coming here to this fantastic studio and meeting James, who is from a totally different world, musically, background-wise, and connecting. When you do music and you connect with somebody on that kind of level — well we should do stuff. So yeah, I stayed. And the food is good and it doesn't rain that much.

How long in New York for you?

TG: Three years.

Tell me more of how you met James.

TG: Well, we came here with the David Holmes experience with James as head of the studio and another guy...

JM: Who we'll call TB.

TG: What's that?

JM: TB, I think that's what he wants to be known as.

TG: Okay. It was just one of those small world kind of things where David knew Marcus, who had first come here DJ'ing and building the cabinets [in the recording studio].

JM: Marcus [Lambkin] had made a big record release party for David because nobody had really known about him and I guess that's how it all came about.

Remixing is a very unique field. Who are your inspirations?

TG: Oh, blimey!

JM: Blimey is good.

D.J. Blimey wasn't it? [laughter]

TG: Basically, how I got into doing the music stuff was by being a young kid with James Lavelle hanging around at the record companies and going, "Give us a remix, give us a remix," because we really couldn't write our own stuff. We didn't have a clue, and we really didn't really know how to use any equipment or anything like that. The whole remix thing is my starting point of how I make music. Old hip-hop mixes are where I come from — trying to get the hypnotic thing going on in remixes.

At the same time, is that how did you got into drum programming?

TG: Yeah, because I'm not a musician. I can't play a thing. I'm tone deaf. [I] really don't have the patience to learn how to play anything. I get very frustrated when I try to work something out on the keyboards. If I can't get it done within, like...

JM: Thirty seconds.

TG: Thirty seconds. [laughs] So drum programming is where I started and what I love doing because it's such a random thing for me. And I really don't know what I'm doing. You do something quite stupid and people go, like, "Wow... yeah, okay." [laughter]

I actually heard about you getting your first proper laptop computer. It was something like 4, 000 quid at the time?

TG: Yeah. It's about working in the technology side of things, keeping up with the latest trends you always get really burned. When I operated from the old kind of 808 and 202 and 950, again the S3000, and a Macintosh 540C — kind of state-of-the-art at the time. That was probably, like, five grand or something.

I heard you paraded down the street with it.

TG: That was my little signature thing: being able to turn up to sessions with two briefcases — one with the sampler in it and the other with the laptop in it. It was very suave. [laughs] Suave drum programmer.

What is it that you like to bring into a remix?

TG: Whoa. It really depends from remix to remix. It's normally kind of listening to stuff and thinking, like, whether they didn't really do it hard enough on this, or they weren't smooth enough or just weren't funky enough. You know what it's like when you're recording the track itself. Sometimes you get so sentimental with all the other pieces that you can't think, "Oh, I'm going to lose the song if I get too funky with it. No, oh, I'm gonna lose this guitar part if I want to get a bit harder," or something like that. And being in a remix is fantastic because you can wade in without having any emotional attachment to any of the parts and just be like, "That, get rid of that, and turn the drums up there." Which is basically what we do. [laughter]

Are you attracted to particular songs, or is it a case of someone usually ringing you up when you begin a new project?

TG: What we like to do is to actually meet the people, but first of all you kind of hear the music and see if the people are on the same wavelength.

JM: Or if they aren't, that there is a way to get there.

TG: Generally, to meet the people and hang out with them. Just have a laugh and see where their heads are, musically.

JM: And play them records.

TG: I never really enjoyed the blind kind of phone call from the manager and the offer of money.

JM: We did that once... with terrible results. It took us weeks, because they didn't like it, and we knew that they wouldn't like it. Every time we did something that we liked, we knew that they wouldn't like it. It was just the circular path thing.

TG: We do the same thing with the remixes on our own label. Get to know the people.

So now, instead of the scenario of someone ringing you up, do you hear a song on the radio and are drawn to that?

TG: The trouble with that way is that usually the song has already been released, so you've already missed the boat with remixing that song. The way the record companies work is that it would be released at least three months later. It's a good way to kind of alert yourself to people that you like and it's such a small world in the music business [that] you usually end up crossing paths at some point.

More a matter of crossing paths.

TG: Yeah, I think so. It's nice just meeting like-minded people, as well. We're very drawn to the people who try to make electronic music live, and live music sound electronic.

How would you describe yourself in relation to someone like Howie B. [remixer of U2 and Björk]?

TG: First of all, as a friend. I don't know. It's kind of difficult to describe. Howie, and K.U.D.O, and Matty from Skylab and me. No really set rules in any particular way. It's always a sense of fun and exploration within stuff, and also liking big bass and drums. [laughter] Howie used to have this thing where he used to put ashtrays on top of NS10s and he wasn't happy until the bass was making the ashtray fall off. The times I've worked with him and seen the NS10s just go boof! [laughs] It's a lot of fun working in the studio with him.

I heard that Björk came by the studio.

TG: That was completely by chance.

Anything in the works perhaps with that?

TG: We're not sure. I don't know. She's a mysterious one.

JM: She happened to be at the yoga center next door.

TG: That's one of those things where it's such a small world. She happened to be next door. I noticed this girl with nice sneakers, and — oh my God, I realized it was Björk. So it's like, "Should I talk to her? Will she remember me?" She used to be at the Mo' Wax label popping in time to time. I called up Jon [Galkin] who was here and he went over with some CDs and chatted and we ended up giving her a tour of the studio.

JM: The other weird thing was that somehow someone had called [Beastie Boy] Mike D. looking for a programmer for her. He had recommended me, which is kind of hilarious, because I'm not a programmer. [laughs]

Are there any new projects which The DFA that you can talk about?

TG: Mainly concentrating on the artists on the label, which is a varied bunch. But there's something between them that I don't think anyone has been able to put their finger on yet, the connection between them, and it's starting to drive us mad because people are asking what it is and we really don't know.

I heard Radio 4 on the radio, and that they were playing the clubs. Don Hill's.

JM: That was their record release party with Zero Zero.

I know that the "House of Jealous Lovers" is doing really well.

TG: Yeah, The Rapture.

JM: We sold out of that 12-inch before it was out. I think they're sold out of it in England right now, before it was technically released, with pre-orders. If we send more to England it'll be the fourth pressing and it's been out a month.

TG: Yeah, maybe a month-and-a-half.

JM: It's a really strong track and it's...

TG: It's of the time.

JM: Of the time, even though it was done a while ago.

Will they be coming back soon to do some more?

JM: They're in now. They're working on the album now. That's what's going on. They're playing a show right now in Philadelphia, so that's why they're not here today. What's up on the computer, on the console, everything is The Rapture LP and another couple of 12-inches.

Fantastic.

JM: The Rapture LP and the Black Dice LP will be our first full-length releases.

Any hints of what the new Rapture 12-inch will sound like?

TG: It's such a...

JM: It's something that could be totally be misinterpreted if we explain it. [laughter] What it boils down to is that they're good songs. They're properly good songs.

TG: Yeah.

JM: We had a long discussion with them about what they wanted the band to be, what was really important to preserve and what they felt was really flexible. Like, what about them defined them in a way they didn't want to change. Like, this is The Rapture, and what about them were the things that they wanted to break away from, or wanted to be freer about.

What was it like working on the "Planet Telex" mix for Radiohead?

TG: Oh, that was back in the day. That was with the master K.U.D.O., who I learned everything from. Fantastic. I can't actually remember how that started. I think it was a case of us phoning up and saying we like Radiohead and them sending some stuff. That was done on one of those tiny Tascam keyboard mixers, and an ADAT and an S1000. That was fun. Actually, the version that they've got on the record, they shortened it. It goes on for another six minutes of absolute psychedelic chaos. It's so fantastic. I was so gutted that they cut it down. That started a good relationship with the Radiohead people, who are really nice people.

JM: We had it within a week.

TG: We use it on nearly every track in some subtle way. It's so hands-on. I think it's pretty easy to understand. I've been using it for ten years. The whole reason I got into music was because I couldn't play a thing. I could never play keyboards or guitars or anything, so I like pieces of equipment with lots of knobs on it, which make crazy sounds and which you don't actually have to play anything on.

JM: Which you could control as well as anyone else playing an instrument. [laughs]

TG: Like a drum machine or the EMS or a sampler then. There's the whole reason I got into music, and loving the gear.

In designing and building the studio from scratch, what were some of your goals in mind for the space?

JM: I just designed the ergonomics of it. We had an acoustic designer named Jim Marr do a lot of the acoustics. I designed the weirdest part of it, which is that speaker array [surrounding the mixing console from the wall]. Because the guy doing the drawings was very uncool — not Jim Marr but the architectural drawings guy — and when I told them what I wanted to do with all these speakers [points], the top speaker, the central speaker, lower speakers all needed to reach a central point, they freaked out. They just said it would look really ugly. It's impossible to build. So for this entire weird structure I had to build boxes that would replicate the speakers and have strings in the boxes that tied to a pole where my head was supposed to be. And you had a hole in the front of the box and it was stapled into the back of the box so you could pivot it so you tell it was really aimed at you. So we had all these strings going out from these boxes here to the center of the imaging, and got foam core, and built this out of foam core without measuring anything. Built the whole thing by eye. Then we had a master carpenter come in by the name of Bruno, who's incredible, who did all the detailed carpentry throughout the studio, which is really amazing detail work. The panels in Live C — did you see those [tall hinged panels built into the wall of the drum room]? They are fabric on one side and maple on the other. If you look at the math that went into building the wood trim in Live A and the weird cedar in Live B [cedar room for acoustic guitars and strings], the math that guy had to deal with all that stuff is incredible.

I've noticed your elevator [next to the drum room]. Is that your echo chamber?

JM: There's a microphone in that elevator chamber. It's a car elevator, so it's huge. We use it a lot. You can raise or lower the elevator for different amounts of reverb. Most clap tracks, tambourine tracks, all the pianos. There's always a C451 sitting there if we want to hear what something might sound like through it. It's pretty funny because there's an air- conditioning unit on the roof that turns on and off, so you have to time it. You have to hope the vocal take is over before the air-conditioner kicks back on. [laughs]

TG: Then there's the Silo-phone. Where you call a phone number and someone has a reverb setup in an old corn silo.

Really?

[Tim Goldsworthy picks up phone and dials for an echo chamber. He presses the button for the speakerphone and huge chamber ensues.]