I've been all over the world, searching out unique recording spaces. However, none have been in as rural a location than the building in the woods where Nino Moschella recorded his fantastic neo-funk/soul record, The Fix (on Ubiquity Records). Located in the California foothills, about an hour north of Fresno, I found myself traversing some ill- maintained roads that eventually lead to a dirt path, which continued down a steep hill. I had to slow down as cattle wandered in the roadway, and when leaving I was pointed to an "easier" path that had me driving my already battered car across a small creek bed, which, according to signs, would be impassable later this winter. But the journey was worth it.
Nino M was born out here in 1976, in the house that is next to what has become his personal studio. His father built the second structure to have a place to play music, and his son quickly gravitated to messing with the instruments, first as a drummer and then conquering bass, guitar, keyboards and singing. Despite the rural setting of his upbringing and recording, the path he's followed has led him to creating grooving funk/soul/pop gems that recall Sly and The Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, Shuggie Otis — even a lo-fi Prince. And why was I out here? To find out how and why one of the grooviest records of recent times could have been recorded out in the woods in rural California.
What is this building we're in?
My parents built their house and finished it in '76 — the year I was born. I was actually born in the house. My pop is a musician so he had bands. After the house was done, he started building this [the second structure] with the idea that it would be a place to hang out and play music.
Did your dad teach you music when you were young?
Yeah, my dad sparked that first interest. For some reason, I gravitated to drums. Their drummer didn't show up for rehearsal one time so Pop was like, "Just get over there and play some drums."
You picked up other instruments along the way — bass, guitar and keyboards?
Yeah. I was definitely fortunate to have access to everything.
Did he have anything to record with when you were young?
I think he had a reel-to-reel at one point, but I never used it. In high school, the 4-track that I first started experimenting with was his. I think it was a [Tascam] 424.
So you ended up moving back here a few years ago?
Yeah, it's been almost four years. My wife and I moved out here to have our first child. We were living in the [San Francisco] Bay Area and it's expensive there, so we thought we'd get a couple of years where we didn't have to work that much and could be with our daughter. Before we moved, I recorded a 4-track demo called The Bedroom Recordings just to get songs done. That's what Ubiquity [Records] picked up on. Some of the songs I recorded at that point in time are actually on The Fix in a different form. Later we decided to move back up to the Bay Area because of school options for our daughter Stella and to get more of a community vibe. It had been pretty isolated. Ubiquity put out an EP [The Real Better Believe] that had a few of those earlier songs — mostly 4-track stuff.
Were they meant to be demos?
I was recording to get stuff out of my mind and onto something — it wasn't really to demo them out to do them later. When the album started to come to fruition, I wanted some of those songs to be represented. However, it made sense to re-record a couple of them in order to fit sonically on the album.
What did you record The Fix on?
One song is on a 4-track from that time period, some of it is Pro Tools and some of it is an 8-track 1" machine — just between those three things. It's pretty back and forth. Some of the drums are recorded on the 8-track 1" and a lot of the embellishments — top end stuff — are done in Pro Tools because it's easier to set up.
Did you track drums on the 1" and put it into Pro Tools?
Yeah. For half the songs on the album the drums were done on tape (and some of the bass) but the rest was done on Pro Tools. I love working in Pro Tools and I love the sound of tape too, so I try to use both of them. Sometimes it's just easier to use Pro Tools, especially because there's rarely anyone out here with me. Running back and forth trying to get levels — it's a lot easier with Pro Tools.
Some of the drums on The Fix have a crazy quality — kind of roomy but a little overdriven and sort of crunchy, mid-fidelity. What is causing that?
I like to mess around with overdriving preamps. However, it's more or less about trying to figure out what I want to hear versus trying to make it a certain way. When it sounds right, it's right. I'm not that technical in terms of recording. I put up a couple of mics and move shit around until it sounds good. Sometimes it sounds cool to turn the preamps up — maybe that's what you're referring to.
A preamp would also bring up the room tone when you distort it — I was hearing that — but then there would be other songs that sounded gated.
Super dry? I love using gates! Sometimes it's only gated on the actual snare. I would say about 85 to 90 percent of the drums on the album were done live. I usually start with drums, put them down first and add on to the top. As far as the gating goes, sometimes I'll gate the live snare or I'll just put a snare on top from the drum machine or the Nord keyboard. On the song, "Are You For Real," it's a live drum part. On top of [those drums] are kick drums from the Nord and snare drums played live to augment what the drums were doing. I got heavily into gating the drums.
It's a cool contrast. Some tracks feature roomy, crunchy drums and other songs are real tight.
Yeah, that's what gating does — it tightens everything up. It becomes so attack-y.
It's synthetic but not synthetic.
It's like a drum machine, but it's live drums. I'm a huge Questlove and Sly Stone fan -the drums are always so cool — in your face and present. There's a whole cliché with gates in the '80s — with the toms and whatnot — but for me the best use of a gate is for the dry effect.
Do you ever gate other instruments to tighten them up with the drums, like put the bass through a gate and trigger it from the kick?
No, I haven't. I gotta try that now! I've heard about people triggering the bass gate through a kick drum. I've never tried because I don't know how to set it up.
Use the "key" input. You can set this so the kick hits and bass attacks slow behind the hit, so the input kind of sculpts the gated sound.
That sounds cool for a handful of songs — to mess around with.
Occasionally this works.
Of course. That's what I found with the gates in general — sometimes they really work and you usually know when it doesn't.
What gear did you have for recording The Fix?
I bought a board, a handful of preamps, new speakers and some [Empirical Lab] Distressors after I got signed, using the advance. I beefed up the studio, but I had been building it before then. For the last ten or twelve years I'd been accumulating a lot of the instruments. In the process, I've moved from a 4- track to ADATs to a reel-to-reel and then to Pro Tools — the standard stepping-stones of recording. I had one of those [Tascam] MX-2424s for a little while. That was right around when the Digi001 came out — you remember the whole Pro Tools hysteria? I bought into it. [laughs] Out of all those mediums, the 4-track and the Pro Tools are still here.
I see the [Digidesign] 888 units here.
Yeah, this is a [Pro Tools] TDM system and a couple of 888 interfaces.
You've got "vintage" Pro Tools.
Yeah, vintage Pro Tools — because HD is ridiculously expensive.
What equipment do you have in your home in the Bay Area?
Two channels of Neve preamps, two channels of API preamps, a Digi002 with a [Power]Mac G5 and some mics. Do you still come out here to do some tracking and then continue working at home? How do the two spaces work? I haven't yet. It has been so recent since we moved back up there. I hooked up with a band called The Park that I'm working with in the Bay Area — Derek Taylor, Josh Lippi, Ben Schwier, Mikey Aguilar. They're constantly working in the Bay Area. With this new incarnation, the idea is to get us in the studio soon. That's definitely on the horizon — getting everybody back here to track — at least rhythm section stuff.
Camp out for a few days and get the basics done. Are you guys rehearsing more as a band for the new album?
We haven't really rehearsed specifically for the record, but there are songs that we play that aren't on my last record. I'm still trying to figure out what system of working will work out. It's still so new — being away from this space. I only recently got my whole system at home dialed in properly. I had all kinds of software problems. We're looking for more of a "studio" space in the Bay. That's looking good. Have some gear there to record, rehearse and create a general "club house" area. I can't have six or seven dudes coming over to my house!
Your daughter would be thinking, "What in the world?"
She would love it. She'd be right in there. But it's good to have a space where you can stretch out and play — to just get comfortable in.
You've used various recording mediums. Do you have such a stylized way of capturing sounds in the first place that it doesn't matter to go between Pro Tools, 4-track and tape?
There's the general difference between tape and digital that everyone talks about, but the sound is pretty close. I don't tend to use a lot of drum mics. It's kind of hectic because recording by myself, the best way is kind of stream of consciousness. Put it down as soon as I hit on something and move on. Plug it in. Put it down.
The record has a mid-range quality I was trying to figure out. Even the bass has sort of a '70s tone to it.
I love the sound of those records, specifically Stevie Wonder and the Sly Stone. Super dry, super mid- punchy. The bass is there — everything is there. You can hear everything but it's not super sub- sonic and it's not super crisp. It's almost dull. It's not harsh to listen to on the top end. There are so many good records out there — it's ridiculous. All the Michael Jackson, all the Beatles — that stuff sounds amazing. As a drummer, I really love a real tight, close, dry drum recording — I feel that's the mid-'70s funk and soul sound. When there's a lot of syncopated stuff going on, you can't have [drum] reverb flying all over the place.
Has anyone heard your record and then asked you to record them or produce their band?
You know what? A couple, but I've been out of the recording loop. That's what I was doing full time before my wife and I moved out here. I worked at a studio called Bellboy Studios in Richmond, [California]. It was a project studio — nice Pro Tools system. That's what I was doing. I was playing gigs, but as far as money I was freelancing over there.
What kind of genres were you recording?
Mostly jazz and gospel music. We worked with a fifty-piece vocal choir a few times. I did engineering prior to moving out here. It was great because I was learning a lot and was able to work on other people's projects and not be engulfed — being able to hear music rather than being in it. Now that we're in the Bay Area, I'd like to start engineering again. It's most likely on the horizon.
How did you end up with that job in the first place?
I was working in various music stores for eight years or so. I did a studio internship in Fresno, which is an hour away from here. I relocated to the Bay and got a job at another music store. I finally came to the point where I just wanted to record. I started calling people in the phone book, "Hey, do you need a second engineer? Can I help out in any way?" Dave Bell is a guitar player and he had a studio [Bellboy Recording]. It was only him — and he decided to hire me. It was cool.
Do you feel like you learned a lot on the job?
Tons. Unbelievably. From day one! We were the only two people there. He didn't hire me to go get coffee and stuff, which was very fortunate because I hear all these stories about people...
"Burrito run!"
Yeah, exactly. "Go clean the toilet." I felt really fortunate. I was immediately allowed to record bands. I had done a handful of projects leading up to that, but not every day and not as quickly as things needed to be done. Like where there's a jazz group coming in and they're not like, "Hey, let's spend a ton of time getting the sound on the kick drum." They just wanted to set up, do their thing, and be done. That was a really good learning experience. It was fun, after the stress subsided and I found my rhythm.
How many years did you work at Bellboy?
Five years. Dave's a jazz guitar player, so he's connected in the jazz community there — all the cats that are making records in order to get gigs — a lot of good, independent and local music.
Has it been fun playing live?
Yeah! It's such an underground record. The album still has a lot of leg left to it. The act of getting the music out live has been a whole process in itself — something that needs to happen for me to feel okay about getting back in the studio and working on another one. That's what we're focused on.
How do you find an audience? Real funk is kind of scarce these days.
I don't know what our crowd is, but being in the Bay Area — funk is still real present and I think it always will be. It's such a beautiful form of music. The direct roots of hip-hop are funk. If there's an MC in the crowd that everybody in the band knows and respects, we usually have that person come up and sit in with us. There's definitely a crossover into a hip-hop area.
When is your next album going to be released?
The label wants it now.
Has it been recorded?
In terms of songs, half of the album is done. I don't know if they all will be on the album. I need to get this done. I just want to have a handful of good songs and be able to pare it down from there. r
www.ninomoschella.com www.ubiquityrecords.com
