Jace Lasek / Dave Smith

My first encounter with the sprawling collection of keyboards, pianos, British-made guitar amplifiers and homemade walls that is Breakglass Studios happened when I had the opportunity to sit in on a session for the band Shoot the Moon. I opened the door at the end of the hall in an otherwise nondescript building in Montreal's Little Italy to find the studio's tape library. Reels of 2-inch and quarter-inch tape sat in their boxes, with names like Islands, Besnard Lakes, and Sunset Rubdown written on the spines. I made my way further in and opened the door to the control room, where the band was tracking vocals while Jace Lasek sat at the console. Lasek and his business partner/co-engineer Dave Smith met in high school in Regina, Saskatchewan. After school, they moved to the west coast before realizing that if they wanted to have their own studio space, they would have to escape the high cost of living in Vancouver. They settled in Montreal in late '99. At the time, Montreal was at the tail end of a long recession, and one could easily get by cheaply. Since then, they've worked on albums and songs by the aforementioned bands, as well as Wolf Parade, Bell Orchestre and Destroyer, among others. Along the way they have learned, often through trial and error, how to get the most out of their haphazard collection of recording gear, how to build walls and reflection-free zones and how to build and mod their own gear. Most importantly, they have honed their abilities, knowing as Jace puts it, "When to be invisible, and when to step up and provide support to the band." This is their stated purpose: helping bands get the most they can out of the studio environment.

In this control room you have a 24- channel Ward-Beck broadcast console, Studer 16-track and 2-track reel-to-reels, Radar and Pro Tools. What do you usually use for tracking?

Jace: It depends how big the project is. Some bands come in and want to limit themselves to the 16-track, so I've mixed entire projects on the Ward-Beck using outboard gear. Other bands that are doing something a little more complex will fill up the 16-track, and I'll dump it into the Radar. Some bands don't care about tape, so they'll go straight to Radar, and then we can mix in Pro Tools if they want. We want to make sure that we are always capable of doing whatever people need. If it's just a straight rock band with a couple of guitars and vocals then I can say, "Let's do it on the 16-track and mix on the console." For some of the more involved stuff, if they're going to be adding violins and they want to build up 40 tracks of stuff, we're going to have to mix in Pro Tools, though I know mixing on the console would probably result in a better product. If I can get the project down to 24 tracks, get it back on the Radar with all the edits done and then pass it through the console to the Studer 2-track, I will.

Dave: A lot of bands will come in and use the studio for tracking and then take the tracks home to mix, so a lot of the time mixing isn't even an issue.

J: It's actually a lot of fun for the bands to mix on the board. The shitty thing about mixing in Pro Tools is that people are sitting in the back of the room for hours, watching me draw stupid little lines. We don't have automation on this console, so when we're mixing on it everybody's right there helping with the mix, and they sort of feel like they've had part in it, like they've played their guitar or whatever one more time.

You have an enormous live room, especially considering the size of most tracking rooms in studios these days.

J: Our room is amazing for strings and horns.

It doesn't seem like you have any treatment on the walls.

J: The shape of the control room we built adjoining the live room means that by default, there are no parallel walls in the live room. Even if the walls were parallel it would be okay since the room is big enough.

D: Due to the fact that the room's not finished, there are gaping holes all over the place. There are lots of places for the sound to get lost. I think if we had all the doors in, we'd probably have to put in some kind of treatment.

Do you do a lot of live-off-the-floor recording?

J: Because our live room is so big, we do a lot of live tracking that some studios don't want to do. We do have to tell bands that if you want to record live-off- the-floor, what you're going to hear coming out of the monitors is pretty much how its going be, but we'll let them set up as they would if they were rehearsing. We'll put up baffles if there are any obvious problems.

D: I like to say to bands, "Go set up and make it sound how you want it to sound in the room", and just deal with the bleed for better or for worse, but make sure they're okay with that from the beginning. The funny thing is, they always say they are, but when it comes to mixing, they'll ask for me to do something with the kick, for example. But the bass will be louder than the kick in the kick mic, so I can't. I don't have too much room to maneuver. We just have to let it be sometimes, which I think sometimes gets you better results.

J: There was one project I did where the vocal mic actually became the basis for the whole mix because it was a really hot condenser mic, and when the singer wasn't singing, the whole band was in the mic. I couldn't just turn that off, so I built the mix around this room mic that he was using as a vocal mic. It was fun to mix because it was such a challenge.

I've noticed that the sound of the records coming out of this studio are fairly diverse. For example, there's a marked difference between the sound of Return to the Sea by Islands and Shut Up I Am Dreaming by Sunset Rubdown. Return to the Sea sounds unhyped, almost the opposite of the Sunset Rubdown record, which sounds like it's using a lot of compression and it's got a kind of midrange grit to it.

J: The Sunset Rubdown record was mixed by Spencer [Krug, singer for Sunset Rubdown].

D: He tracked it here and then took it home and mixed it in an afternoon or something. He called me after and said," You're gonna hate it, you're gonna hate my mix."

J: We tracked most of that live-off-the-floor and straight into the 16-track.

D: I bounced it onto Radar and he took those files home. The difference in sound between those two records probably has more to do with who mixed it. Mark Lawson mixed Return to the Sea and Spencer mixed Shut Up I Am Dreaming. They also both used their own gear to mix, so that probably accounts for a lot of the difference.

So the characteristic sound of those albums isn't necessarily a result of you making it sound that way. Do you attempt to get a neutral sound when you are tracking?

J: There are certain things that I like to do and prefer to do, but I'm not going to force my opinion on people. I want them to feel like they're making a record as opposed to me making a record and forcing them to have my sound.

So it's not like a Prince production.

J: Yeah exactly. [laughs] But you know, there are times when people come in and they'll say that they want me to put my stamp on it. I'm working with Steve Ramsay right now (the guitarist for Stars) on a project called Young Galaxy, and he's basically said "You can help me with the arrangements, and you can play on it if you want and I want you to build it in the way you would your own records." So this is kind of the first time I've been able to build a project from the ground up, and I'm making the decisions as far as sound goes. He obviously has the final say, and I never impose anything on him, but since he's given me the opportunity make decisions sometimes I'll say "Well, I think this is a really good idea. You can throw it out later, but lets just put it on now."

D: Steve liked your record and he wanted you to bring that kind of an idea to it. But I don't think it sounds like a Besnard Lakes [Jace's band] record.

J: I think Besnard records sound terrible compared to the other stuff we've done here.

What was it he was looking for?

J: Besnard records are always really haphazardly put together. It's my opportunity to experiment with things that I couldn't really ever do with a band. Sometimes I make mistakes when I'm making the Besnard records, but I never go back. For example, if I do a drum track, it's usually just one mic in the room — 'cause when I do the Besnard stuff I'm alone.

Whereas with Shoot the Moon you used ten mics on the drums.

J: Yeah. I'll put one mic in the room and record with some compression, and when I'm mixing it, I'll see the drums need more, so I'll overdub something else.

D: No band would ever come in and let you use just one mic on the drums!

J: I know! So I'll go back and record another drum track over top of it and it's fine. I'm just haphazardly putting it together. When I'm recording vocals for Besnard, I'm usually sitting at the console with an SM57 running right into the space echo, so there's shitloads of noise, and I just sit there and sing with the headphones on. I guess that was the kind of approach that Steve was looking for.

You can afford to be less conservative when it's your own project.

J: Yeah. The other thing is I don't have a lot of time when I'm making Besnard records because it's usually between jobs. I throw a mic up and get it down, so the sound isn't going to be as hi-fi. I can't put ten mics on the drums. I've just gotta hope that the one mic I do use is not going to peak out.

D: It think stuff like that sounds better anyway. I tend to believe that the more obsessive and anal you are, the worse off it's going to sound — to a degree at least. Obviously this is not always the case.

J: There is something to be said about a sense of urgency. Sometimes it translates onto the record. You can tell when something's been slapped together really quickly. There's something really cool about that. All the old records from the fifties and sixties were done very quickly, and recorded to 2-track or to 4-track. There are obviously lots of errors. Something will be too loud or pop out, but I love that stuff. I guess I use the studio as a giant 4-track. I just keep layering things, because that's how I always used to use my Tascam 4-track. There's always going to be errors in the 4-track format. Whenever you bounce, there's going to be something that's bounced too high or too low, so you have to compensate for that. I love that about it.

Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards had the "Honor thy mistake as hidden intention." I always try to keep that in mind in my own work.

J: In my experience, a lot of the bands don't want to experiment. They're paying, and they don't want to spend time on something that might not work. They want to get in and get out.

D: It's a drag. I've been listening to "I Am the Walrus" a lot lately, and it seems so far away from what anyone would try today. That was obviously the product of a lot of experimentation. It's great when bands do take the time and spend two weeks to track an album. Islands actually recorded a drum track on the roof. It's not as experimental as John Lennon wanting to be hung upside down and swung around to get a weird sound, but at least they're trying. I think there's this trend towards documenting bands. My favorite records sound like records, not like a perfect mirror of the original performance. It's a philosophy of capturing the sound exactly how it is and that's the record, as opposed to manipulating the sound in some way. I like it when people make their records a little different from what the band actually sounds like.

What kinds of issues would you have recording drums on a roof?

J: There are no reflections — it's like an anechoic chamber. Once the sound leaves, its gone.

D: They were getting a slapback from a nearby building. It was a telemarketing office and a bunch of people were watching them from the windows. It was a weird kind of rock star moment for J'aime [Tambeur, Islands' former drummer]. It sounded really cool.

J: They built the tempo of the song around the reflection that was coming back. It's an unreleased track off their album. They'll probably release it as a b-side or something. Aside from that, I think almost all the drums on Return to the Sea were tracked in the dead room.

You guys build some of your own gear?

J: The goal when we started this studio was similar to the Joe Meek philosophy, where he built his whole studio from scratch, down to the electronics. Dave's doing a lot of research on how we can buy kits and build our own preamps and modify things. We're really excited about that, but we have this ongoing argument. People come to the studio and have this preconceived notion that if it's not Neve or API, it's not good enough. We're going to build this stuff that hopefully will sound as good, or maybe more interesting. But how are we going to have people know that we can get good sounds without these big names?

Bands have come in and been uncom-fortable with the fact that you don't have any of the big names in preamps?

J: Yeah. Because the daily rate here is quite low, we'll say to them, "If you want, you can rent stuff." So a lot of bands do that and it makes them feel better.

D: If we bought all the gear that all these people seem to want, we'd have to double our rates, at which point...

J: No one would come. D: No one could afford to come. I think a lot of the bands deserve to have a great sound. I wish people would trust us a little more to be able to provide that. I think it would be really cool [if] the studio had its own custom stuff that we had voiced by component choice to suit our needs. It won't be Neve or API, but hopefully it'll sound good. I'd like if you could work it in somewhere that the Ward-Beck beats out API and Neve in A/B tests.

I can put that in verbatim! The Wolf Parade album, Apologies to the Queen Mary, was mixed here.

D: That was early on. There were no walls here yet. J: We mixed it in the giant space. We started in our old space, and finished it here. It was hilarious. We had a little setup when this was just a raw five thousand square- foot room.

I had read that they were unhappy with how it sounded before they came to you.

J: They were unhappy with the way that Isaac [Brock, Modest Mouse] had mixed it, and they came here to mix it again. I think they just wanted to get their hands on it and make it their own again

D: Didn't Spencer take some of the tracks home? J: Yeah, they all had a huge hand in it. I think they just wanted to get their record back. They had always recorded in their own space. I think they felt a little disillusioned because it didn't sound the way they were used to making themselves sound.

D: With the Sunset Rubdown record, Spencer lamented the fact that it sounded like it was recorded in a studio. He would have, with hindsight, preferred recording it at home. That EP that Wolf Parade recorded themselves sounds amazing.

J: If Arlen [Thompson, drummer for Wolf Parade] ever gets that Ward-Beck that he bought up and running, I think they'll probably make their own records from now on. Going into a professional studio was an opportunity for them to see what it's like to work in that kind of environment. I remember Spencer telling me that he was troubled by it. He was asking himself if they should take this opportunity or just make it themselves.

D: Dan said to me, "The one lesson I learned out of all this is that having a room full of super-expensive gear doesn't mean you're going to make a good record."

J: I understand that people want to make it sound really cool because the concept of the album dictates that it sound a certain way, and that's awesome, that's fine...

D: But you're not necessarily going to make a great album because you have Neve preamps and a Neumann mic.