Pryapisme - Un Druide Est Giboyeux Lorsqu'il Se Prend Pour Un Neutrino

Short and True Biography

Pryapisme still hasn’t learned how to write a biography since 2000, even though they receive daily advice from a dozen communication consultants. Pryapisme is the true definition of a band with a tragic background: from a failed career in the professional table football league, followed by an eviction from the board of a major oil company, to ending up being the only men to have nearly died of leucosis because they systematically accompany their Burgundy beef with cat urine. Some members are digging even deeper by sporting a moustache, long hair or having flabby nails. There’s even an almost bald redhead. In other words, a grenadine diabolo might not be enough to pick up girls. So, Pryapisme prefers spending their time with small cats, and getting hugs on a cozy couch in exchange of a few music notes. This is now their only social bond. On stage, it’s almost as if a 10-year-old child raised by Saint Seiya was trying to play a DragonForce track on Guitar Hero while eating a pizza with extra cheese. There are failures, but it’s really funny. Yet, they still haven’t understood that their music is bound to be a commercial failure and will end up lost in the digital limbo, the place where some obscure and forgotten bands are only listened to by a bunch of theoreticians of the vacuum.

Full and Boring Biography

The band started in Clermont-Ferrand, France, with Ban Bardiaux and Aymeric Thomas in 2000 during high school. Aymeric played drums on Ban's classical piano songs then they were joined by two musicians: Simon Gastaud on bass (who would later play in the band Format) and Jack Bardiaux, Ban’s brother, on guitars. To rehearse, the band found a good place in Aymeric’s mum cattery, among around 30 cats who often pissed on their amplifiers and bass drums. In their hometown, they had a solid reputation for being a band that smelt like cat piss and ammonia. Which was true. For many years, the band played a bunch of gigs in France until the release of their very first listenable demo "Pump up the pectine" in 2005.
Then, Nicolas Sénac on guitars and Alex Peronny on bass/cello joined the band. The band was featured on the Ulver Tribute "My own wolf" (on Aspherical Asphyxia/Cold Dimensions Records) in 2007. They worked for 4 years to produce the first full-length album "Rococo Holocaust" in 2010, mostly composed by the pianist Ban. The album was mastered by Tom Kvalsvoll from Strype Audio in Oslo, Norway. Alex left Pryapisme soon after, and the band continued for 3 years as a trio. They also recorded a music soundtrack ordered for the videogame documentary "Tournament of Legends".
The years 2012/2013 were a turning point: they moved from their rehearsal room to another place, still in the cattery but in a safe zone (i.e. without cats). Since then, Aymeric has been handling most of the composing and arrangements with computer softwares.  They turned their place into a bigger home-studio to record the instrument tracks and to rehearse. The "Plimptphlymst Studio" is now cat-proof and better equipped! In 2012, they also met Simon Capony, the sound-engineer from Basalte-Studio who has mastered most of their releases since then. Thanks to "Rococo Holocaust", the band was contacted by Apathia Records and signed their first record deal.
In 2013, they released their second album "Hyperblast Supercollider" and a tape of chiptune music from their two first albums "Blastbit Rococollider" in 2014. A first music video came out: "Un druide est giboyeux lorsqu'il se prend pour un neutrino". It made over a million views on YouTube before being removed due to less than a second of nudity content. Soon after, Nils Cheville on guitars and Antony Miranda on bass/guitars/moog joined forces for live gigs. Pryapisme played for the first time outside of France. Since then, the band has been a five-headed monster.
2 EPs later, "Futurologie" (one long 23min track - Apathia Records in 2015) and "Repump the pectine" (re-arrangements of their first demo EP - self-released in 2016), they produced their third album, "Diabolicus Felinae Pandemonium" (still on Apathia in 2017) after 17 years of existence. In 2017, the band was commissioned by the French video-game studio "Macrales" to create the original soundtrack for the game "Epic Loon". With the support of Shibuya, Pictanovo and the CNC, the game was published by Ukuza on July 2018 on PC, Switch and Xbox One (later on PS4). Apathia records also released the OST (2Cds digipack) the same year. Some cats from the beginning have died, but new ones are born and continue to inspire Pryapisme with cuddles. History goes on.  From: http://www.pryapisme.net/the-band.html

Maria McKee - Life is Sweet - Live 1996

To my ears and soul, Life Is Sweet is not just one of the greatest lost albums of all time, but one of the greatest, period. It’s glam. It’s rock. It’s operatic. It’s art. The story behind it: While touring in support of her country-rock classic You Gotta Sin to Get Saved in 1993, one of the members of Maria’s band is said to have given her a mixtape of classic glam and glitter tunes. Maria listened. Loved. Obsessed. And then wrote and recorded a set of songs, released in 1996, that blended those glittery hues of yore with dramatic colors of her own design.
“Scarlover,” the opening track, is a great example. It’s rough, ragged and refined all at the same time, with guitars giving way to strings that give way to guitars, set to Maria’s seemingly stream-of-conscious admission that “ugly inside of me taught me of beauty/I wouldn’t trade that work of art.” As a whole, the album explores self-doubt, self-loathing and, ultimately, self-acceptance. At times, yes, it’s stasis in darkness (aka Sylvia Plath set to song). More than that, however, it’s Maria McKee unshorn, seemingly exploring her rapid-cycle bipolar disorder in ways that both replicate it and make it relatable. It’s the Bowie homage “Absolutely Barking Stars” with lyrics that delve into yin-yang duality and the dramatic “I’m Not Listening,” in which she attempts to ignore the voices inside her head that are taunting and haunting her.
The utterly catchy “Everybody” explores celebrity and Andy Warhol’s infamous “15 minutes of fame” maxim: “We’ve all been flirting/with the perfect day/when they think we’re perfect/Yeah, but who are they?” There’s also a flat-out incendiary guitar break: “Carried” is another highlight and, of course, there’s the title track, which may well be the greatest song she’s yet written or recorded. Geffen, her record label, hated the album. AAA radio stations like WXPN, which embraced and promoted the hell out of You Gotta Sin, refused to play it. Some critics slammed it. Some fans did, too. Artistic growth often comes at a price, and in this case the cost was Maria’s major-label career. Life Is Sweet failed to sell, and she left Geffen not long thereafter. The album also fell out of print, and has never been reissued, even digitally. (A true crime against art. Twenty-plus years since its release, however, and it sounds as fresh and hauntingly familiar as it did upon first listen. If you like Anna Calvi, Bat for Lashes, and similar dramatic acts, seek it out. You won’t be disappointed.  From: https://oldgreycat.blog/2018/06/23/the-essentials-maria-mckees-life-is-sweet/

Little Feat - Dixie Chicken (with Emmylou Harris & Bonnie Raitt) Live 1977

"Dixie Chicken," a classic rock staple by Little Feat, went on to define the Southern music-loving Californians and inspire the former Dixie Chicks' name. Lowell George, Little Feat's primary guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, co-wrote the future standard with Martin Kibbee (billed as Fred Martin). It tells of a visitor to the Commodore Hotel who goes from thinking he's met the love of his life to pouring his broken heart out to a bartender. They soon learn that other barflys at the hotel had been let down by the same potential suitor.
"Lowell and I had been up all night trying to write a song. We had the Ace Screen Door factory down on Laurel Canyon. As I was leaving, there was a chicken place with a sign that said, 'Dixie chicken,'" Kibbee later recalled in an interview. "He'd been playing the damn thing all night, you know, [imitates riff], which was going through my brain. By the time I got home, I had written this song. When I came back the next morning to the rehearsal hall at the Warner Bros. soundstage, I went, 'I've got it! I've got it!' And they all looked at me like, 'Puh-leeze, you're kidding!'"
Dixie Chicken became the title of the group's third album. Its 1973 release came at a time of transition for the band. Prior albums Little Feat (1971) and Sailin' Shoes (1972) sold poorly, and the group's lineup had become a revolving door. Two new members (guitarist Paul Barrere and congas player and percussionist Sam Clayton) shored up the band's New Orleans R&B/funk sound, while Kenny Gradney replaced original bassist Roy Estrada, who'd left to join Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. These newcomers teamed with keyboardist and synthesizer player Bill Payne, drummer Richie Hayward and George for the remainder of the '70's.
Noteworthy songs beyond Dixie Chicken's title track include Allen Toussaint's  "On Your Way Down," instrumental jam "Lafayette Railroad" and George compositions "Fat Man in the Bathtub," "Roll Um Easy" and "Kiss It Off." "Dixie Chicken" wasn't an overnight success, but its fame grew after subsequent albums (namely million-selling live LP Waiting For Columbus (1978)) gained new fans hungry to hear Little Feat's earlier material. Once momentum was in Little Feat's favor, "Dixie Chicken" became easy pickings for rock radio.
It still hooks in listeners to this day because it's a Los Angeles-based band's earnest exploration of the great Southern music to come out of Memphis and New Orleans, highlighted by George's slide guitar solo and the backing vocals of roots rock icons Bonnie Raitt and Bonnie Bramlett. Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Jesse Winchester joined Little Feat during a 1977 episode of the Midnight Special for a proto-jam band rendition of "Dixie Chicken" that captures the song's jazzy appeal even better than its classic studio version.  From: https://www.wideopencountry.com/little-feat-dixie-chicken/

Jill Sobule - Bitter

Q: It’s been almost a decade since you last released a proper solo album. Why such a long time?

A: Yeah. That’s so weird. I had that little Dottie’s Charms record, which was more of a concept album, out in 2014 and I’ve been working on musicals, but I’ve procrastinated so long on making another solo record of new songs. It’s funny, I think maybe LA just got to me. I also think I had a little bit of a depression and I kind of got spooked. You know, the last record didn’t do so well and you just get a little crestfallen. It also coincided with going through a bad breakup. For whatever reason, I needed a break. I needed to start loving music again. I needed to start listening to older stuff, to newer stuff. Eventually I started writing again. It also coincided with getting a couple of theater projects that I had to write for. When you’re on your own and you don’t have a record company saying, “We need that record,” it gets harder. I think about a band like the Beatles, who had people saying to them, “We need another new record in three months!” When you don’t have someone pushing you, sometimes you stall. The good thing is that I was writing for other projects. Being forced to write for my musical projects, having to be a part of a collaborative community, it all nudged me back into writing again. I started loving it. Also, there’s something great for me about being back in New York, where I go out and see music all the time. In LA it just feels so hard to get in your car and drive for 40 minutes. It feels easier here.

You were famously one of the first people to use a crowdfunding platform to raise money to make your own record. This was back in 2008, before things like Kickstarter. Now it’s such a common thing to do. So many artists now even question if they need a label at all, or whether it’s easier to just do everything yourself.

Well, here’s the thing. When I did my jillsnextrecord.com no one really knew if it would work or not. I came up with the various pledging levels over the course of a drunken night with a friend. The donation levels ranged from polished rock to weapons-grade plutonium. Somehow CNN got hold of the story and the whole thing started going totally gangbusters, mostly because there wasn’t anything else like that yet. Eventually I stopped it after raising nearly 100,000 dollars because Perez Hilton—you remember that horrible man?—wrote about greedy Jill Sobule asking fans to give her money. So, I freaked out. Then a few months later everyone is doing projects this way. I remember having meetings with the people from Kickstarter, telling them about what had worked for me and what hadn’t. So, all these years later I used Kickstarter to make my new record. I was afraid it might fail because nowadays there are so many people asking everyone else to donate to things, but in the end I did it and it worked and it was great. Still, I procrastinated forever before doing it. I just finally had to come to a point of thinking: I want to do a record. I’m not gonna get a record deal or an advance, so I’m gonna have to do this on my own. It was out of necessity, really. I had no choice.
It’s an easier thing to do if you already have an existing fanbase, but it’s still hard. You have to be really tenacious about promoting it and coming up with good rewards for people. I think crowdfunding can be hard for people because it still involves asking for help on some level, which can be a hard thing to do.
The way I look at it, you just have to make sure you are giving something back in return. It’s an exchange. You’re not begging people. My recent Kickstarter met its goal times three, and it had done really well within the first two weeks. I was completely taken aback. Some of the levels of sponsorship we created were really just like jokes, things I thought nobody would ever actually do. For 10 grand you will be my personal lord and savior. Very funny, right? Somebody bought it! Joss Whedon bought it. So on my record he gets listed as my personal lord and savior. I also did things like offer to write people their own personal theme song. That was a big ticket item that a lot of people actually went for. So now I’m writing people their theme songs, as promised.

People might now realize how many different kinds of things you’ve done over the years, other than releasing solo records. Did you find that having these outside projects—writing a musical, for example—let you come back to your solo work with renewed energy or a different perspective?

Oh, completely! How boring would it be to just do this? On one hand, with the music industry changing and being so terrible, I mean, who makes a living doing this now? It’s the one percent who actually make a living doing only this. I’m really a part of the other 99%. There used to be such a thing as a middle-class working musician, but now? I mean, we used to complain about the stupidest stuff, and how the record labels were ripping us off, but now? Shit. I’d love an advance, you know? I actually had something called a “tour bus” for a couple of years that we toured in, with all of this nice airbrushing on the side. I will never get that again. I had to explore other options, take on other kinds of projects and collaborations.

I know you worked with Ben Lee on Nostalgia Kills. When you are doing things on your own terms with your own money, do you set up certain parameters for yourself? Did you give yourself specific deadlines?

Not really. Actually, I had written a bunch of songs over the last few years here and there and just kind of stuck them aside. I basically gave everything to Ben and asked him to pick out the songs we should work on, which was a little overwhelming for him because I think there were over 50 songs there. He definitely gravitated towards the songs that were kind of melancholy. I was really interested and surprised by the things he chose, but it also felt nice to hand that part of the process off to a friend who I also trusted. There was definitely a kind of running theme in the songs he picked that might not have been there if I had chosen them. I also wrote some new songs during the process, which felt good.

Everyone’s career has peaks and valleys. Big tours and small tours, hits and misses, going from playing big rooms back to clubs. How do you keep all of that stuff from creeping into the art you make? Was there ever a time when you were sort of like, “Screw this, I’m gonna do something else instead?”

Yeah, absolutely, because it can be heartbreaking. It can all be so wonderful and then also just so crushing. There was a time when I just didn’t want to listen to music. At all. Not just mine. I don’t know if listening to music just reminded me of my own regrets or failures or what, but I just couldn’t do it. At some point I also realized that I have no marketable skills doing anything else. I have a friend who is a very talented artist and musician, but she also has a law degree and a real job and can be organized. Her thing was always, “If I wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t have this job, maybe I could have made it in the arts.” Jane Siberry has a song that’s called something like, “I’d probably be famous now if I wasn’t such a good waitress.” I basically have no skills to do anything else. Sometimes that feels like a curse, but it could also be a kind of blessing. There was nothing else I could do but this.

How has your definition of success changed over the years?

Oh yeah. What is success? I hate how it’s always like you have to be at the very top or somehow you are meaningless. Like, if LeBron James is the greatest of all-time that somehow means Michael Jordan is now a loser. Like, what are you talking about? Does it mean that I’m a loser if I’m not playing Madison Square Garden or if I’m not even selling out the Bowery? I always get people coming up to me and saying things like, “Oh, I loved you! Why aren’t you bigger? Why aren’t you more famous?” I know they mean well and that they mean that as a compliment, but damn. It’s hard to hear things like that over and over. Like, yeah, why aren’t I? I don’t know. But when that happens I have to remind myself of things like… you know, last week I played a show at someone’s house and I was singing, “I Kissed A Girl” in between Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, who were singing along with me at a party that I was hired to play. In that moment I’m like, you know what? I’m a fucking success. We’re all so fucked up about what success means now.

From: https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/musician-jill-sobule-on-reconfiguring-what-success-means/

The Big Moon - 2 Lines

The Big Moon come across like four different parts of the same person. They finish each other’s sentences between sips of coffee, all the while dutifully filling in holes in one another’s biographies. But perhaps to the surprise of some, frontwoman Juliette Jackson writes the band’s songs in complete solitude. “Juliette lives near the market where I get my groceries from, so sometimes I’d be like, ‘Wanna come in for a cuppa?’ and she’s like, ‘No! I’m trying to finish this song!’” says the band’s Welsh drummer, Fern Ford, miming Jackson’s blustering frustration. At a bustling central London cafe on a brisk British morning, the entire band – Ford, Jackson, Sophie Nathan (lead guitarist) and Celia Archer (bassist) – are crammed around a table built with only two adult-sized humans in mind. They’re here to discuss their upcoming second album, Walking Like We Do, although the conversation often finds itself coming back to the travails of the modern music industry, as well as the prospect of an impending apocalypse.
The Big Moon formed in 2014 after Jackson posted a call-out on Facebook in search of instrumentalists to help her execute a budding songwriting vision. The call-to-arms worked: soon after coming together, the group began hitting a stride, combining ’00s-style indie with Jack Antonoff-ed hooks and production. It was a sleek guitar band sound as indebted to Taylor Swift as it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The quartet burst into wider prominence in 2017 with their debut album, Love in the 4th Dimension, which earned them a place on the Mercury Prize shortlist. Thematically, the album was interesting with the metaphysical: infatuation dragging you headfirst into the unknown. This time around, though, Walking Like We Do’s songs offer a liveliness only this plane can. Optimistic, danceable pop rock shot through in flashes of modern anxiety and heartbreak, where keyboard chords have mostly replaced the grungey guitars. A bigger audience has meant more shows. During a soundcheck in Toronto last year, the band’s punishing schedule appeared to physically and mentally grind Ford – who was juggling roles as tour manager, driver, and drummer – to a halt. She collapsed, crying, even though she didn’t feel sad.

Because of the position you’ve found yourselves in, it might seem ungrateful to complain about working conditions. But musicians – especially independent or less commercially successful ones – are increasingly flagging mental health as being a big issue.

FF: It’s the best job in the world, but it’s not the easiest. It takes its toll in so many different ways. You’re away a lot from your closest friends and family. You’re away for long periods where there’s nothing, then you have this burst of adrenaline for like an hour and it’s… [gestures a sudden deflation] afterwards. So that, everyday, fucks up my moods. You have to find some kind of equilibrium in all of that.

It’s essentially a 24/7 job when on tour.

SN: It’s about finding a way to do it that gives you a sense of routine – in a healthy way. We’ve toured enough now that we’re getting more professional about the way we see it. At the beginning, it was more like, ‘We’re on tour, this is so much fun!’ But you can’t keep that up.

CA: Musicians complaining and suddenly starting to moan about their mental health is good. It’s quite nice to hear people who do the same job as you being like, ‘Hey, I feel weird at the end of a tour. Does anybody else feel weird?’

JJ: We have to work with it at the end of the day, because this is what we all want to do. It’s hard to be honest about those feelings because, well, this is a dream job. This is my dream job – every time I have a bad day, I remember what it felt like to work in a cloakroom, or work in a bar. This is still better. But it’s really hard to be honest about when it’s shit because people just don’t get it. I still have friends who joke about when I’m going to get a real job.

SN: I feel guilty sometimes with friends who work full days.

So when you say that you’re suffering from burnout, do they almost struggle to believe you?

SN: When I’m at home, they’ll say I’m not doing anything. I am – it’s just in a different way. It’s not like people always make me feel like that, but I do sometimes get that feeling. I’m not really doing anything, then I go away for a month and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, this is so intense.’

CA: Then you cry.

SN: It is comforting to know that other people feel weird and that it’s normal [for a musician].

An awkward segue, but one of the things that has caught my eyes has been your visuals. Juliette, do you think about songs visually – and who comes up with the ideas for the videos?

JJ: We usually come up with the ideas ourselves. When I’m writing, I do think about visuals a bit. I quite like watching videos while I’m listening to a song that is half-written.

Because I work on my laptop, with my guitar or whatever, you can get really stuck looking at these little blocks of music that you’ve recorded – graphics, sound waves. But if you watch a video on mute while listening to your song – and I’ve got some favourites, like Robyn, who has got some great videos – you can suddenly hear your song.

Just music videos or other types of videos, too?

JJ: Just music videos, because they have loads of slow-mo and dancing and flashing lights.

SN: It’s a great idea! Your senses are distracted and you’re not overthinking with your eyes.

Your videos have a strong sense of self-awareness.

JJ: The video for ‘Your Light’ – which is the one where we’re riding bicycles – we spent ages just trying to decide what to do for that video because it was our first single back after the first album and we wanted it to be more serious than previous videos.

CA: ‘It’s not a joke! We’re not a joke!’

JJ: Like, we mean these things – we’re a serious band. We developed this little routine on the bikes and then, obviously, the puppets appear. There was a moment where we looked at each other and went, ‘Oh, we can’t help it. This is just who we are.’

Is this lack of self-importance central to your music?

JJ: I think it’s just our personalities. We take our music seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

SN: The songs aren’t sad, even though some of them are about sad things, or are moving in certain ways.

CA: With our first album, there was a lot of, ‘Who are these girls that just bounded onto the scene? Oh, The Big Moon? Lol!’ It was a bit like, ‘Do you not take us seriously? Maybe we should make people take us seriously.’ But then we realised that’s boring, and we’re not like that.

And where does the album title come from?

JJ: It’s a lyric from the song, ‘A Hundred Ways to Land’. It just summed up the whole feeling of the album, which is about growing up and moving on and going forward. But also about trying to feel strong when everything in the world feels quite unsteady. 

From: https://www.huckmag.com/article/the-big-moon-interview-walking-like-we-do-album

Sarah Jarosz - Song Up in Her Head

For Sarah Jarosz, it had to be validating to earn a Grammy Award (her fourth overall) for 2020’s World On The Ground, an album released in the thick of the pandemic, when so much great music fell into a lockdown-induced black hole. Produced with style and restraint by studio veteran John Leventhal, the Best Americana Album winner is a beautiful piece of work, propelled by inventive arrangements and one pristine melody after the next. It’s also one of the finest things Leventhal has helmed since Shawn Colvin’s 1996 breakthrough, A Few Small Repairs. After 2021’s low-key song cycle, Blue Heron Suite, Jarosz aims to regain some commercial momentum with the new Polaroid Lovers (Rounder), the 32-year-old singer/songwriter’s seventh studio album in 15 years. A mandolin prodigy raised in Wimberly, Texas, she was just 18 when she released her debut, and the accolades have rained down pretty much ever since. Polaroid Lovers was produced by Daniel Tashian, who’s best known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, a 2019 Grammy winner for Album Of The Year. For the most part, Jarosz’s latest comfortably follows in the same refined folk/pop vein as World On The Ground, though with a bit more of a rock edge. We caught up with Jarosz in her newly adopted hometown of Nashville, where she’s prepping for a tour that kicks off in Washington, D.C., on February 1.

From a songwriting standpoint, Polaroid Lovers is your most collaborative album to date. How did that come about?

I hadn’t really embraced cowriting with other songwriters before this record. Any cowriting I’d done was with other musicians—people in my band, for example. Every song on this record is cowritten by someone—mostly Daniel Tashian, but also Jon Randall, Natalie Hemby, Ruston Kelly … So, yeah, it does feel more collaborative in that sense.

How much did moving to Nashville play a role in your urge to collaborate more?

I moved here in March of 2020, so there wasn’t a lot of meeting up with people at first. I spent a lot of time at the house with my husband (acclaimed bassist Jeff Picker) making music. But when it came time to start thinking about a new record, I wanted some outside inspiration in terms of fleshing out what I wanted to say. In the spring of 2022, I decided to reach out to some writers I’ve always admired. I was sort of closed off to doing that on my earlier records because I was still finding my voice. It was cool to finally reach that moment where I felt there was actually something to be gained by meeting up with other writers I really respect.

How was working with Daniel Tashian different from your experience with John Leventhal?

Daniel’s studio—the way he has it set up, the vibe—is almost like the Nashville version of what Leventhal has in New York. It’s a home studio. Its comfortable. It’s cozy. It feels like a safe space to try stuff. But with Leventhal, we were recording in bits as we went along. The demo would sometimes become the track itself. He plays everything, so something like “Orange And Blue,” for instance … He actually built out that track, playing drums, piano and bass, and recording a verse and a chorus. I wrote the vocal melody and lyrics and recorded my part over top of that. With Daniel, we wrote everything on the front end. Our first writing session was the first day I met him. We wrote “Take The High Road”—the song that got me so stoked and made me see what this record could be. Then he put together a band, and we tracked the album in eight days, mostly live. That’s a very common occurrence in Nashville, but it was new and different for me. I think the energy from that process comes through on this record.

World On The Ground came out at pretty crazy time, yet it still got some great recognition. How weird was it to snag a Grammy Award in the middle of a pandemic?

The awards were virtual that year, so it was challenging. But that time was challenging for everybody, so I’m obviously not alone in that. We mastered the record in January or February of 2020, and there were a lot of conversations about whether we should even put it out at the time. Ultimately, I’m glad I did. I think it was comforting for people who dug into it, and I’m happy about that.

It seems like you’ve finally settled into a sound you’re comfortable with. How has that evolution felt over the past 15 years?

I feel confident and comfortable right now, especially with this record. But more than anything, that comes from time and growth—not being 18 and knowing myself a little better. It’s a never-ending thing. I hope that I never feel like I’ve arrived. There’s no finish line with art. The goal is to keep running the race.

From: https://magnetmagazine.com/2024/01/29/a-conversation-with-sarah-jarosz/

The Asylum Choir - Tryin' To Stay 'Live

You've mastered the basics of late-'60s pop-rock: Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Kinks, Dylan, Who, Hendrix, Joplin, Doors, Creedence, Stax, Motown. You've explored the second tier: the garage rock and mild trippiness of the box sets Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 and Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond, 1964-1969; the stirrings of singer-songwriters; fusions of pop and rock with new forms such as metal and old ones such as country and jazz. You've liked much of what you've heard from these sources, so you've acquired a taste for early-'70s pop-rock that carried on late-'60s traditions: the power pop of Badfinger and Big Star; the glam of David Bowie and T. Rex; the folk-rock masterpieces of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and so on, and so... Where do you go next, time traveler? Consider visiting the Asylum Choir.
Don't let the name fool you; the Choir consisted of a duo on its first album. Additional musicians appeared on its second, final release, but the assembled multitude never added up to a full choir, not even through the then-limited art of multi-tracking. In whatever form, the band probably never played in an asylum either. The duo consisted of Marc Benno, who sang and played guitar and bass, and Leon Russell, who sang and played guitar, piano, and drums. Benno hailed from Texas, Russell from Oklahoma. They met in LA, where Russell enjoyed an active career as a session musician, from early-'60s work with Phil Spector to mid-'60s work as a member of the so-called Wrecking Crew.
Benno and Russell's debut, Look Inside the Asylum Choir, appeared in 1968. It runs all of twenty-six minutes on the original LP, forty minutes or more with bonus tracks on CD (and the bonus tracks consist of mono mixes or alternate mixes). Benno and Russell cowrote all the songs, either just together or with others.
Like the best work of power-popsters and other lovers of period pieces from the '60s and '70s, so much about this album feels both retro in a good way and totally fresh. The original cover depicted a roll of (unused) toilet paper, a choice so controversial at the time that the album was soon reissued with a photo of Benno and Russell on the cover. Toilet imagery was forbidden in those days--the john on the cover of the Mamas and the Papas' If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (1966) had to be hidden, and the graffiti-laden loo on the Stones' Beggars Banquet (1968) was replaced with an elegant but faux invitation card. Decades later, indie rock bands would use shots of toilets, even the contents of unflushed toilets, for their album covers. The original Look Inside cover would fit right in--and has been restored on reissues.
Likewise, the duo's music, so affectionate toward its sources and painstakingly crafted, would fit in with late-'60s-style sound collages, pastiches, and homages from the 1980s through today. Think of the Paisley Underground bands Rain Parade, Opal, Three O'Clock, and early Bangles (and don't forget these bands' one-off side project, Rainy Day); XTC's psychedelic recordings and Dukes of Stratosphear alter ego; Bongwater and the Shimmy-Disc Records catalog generally; the Flaming Lips; the Fiery Furnaces; the Lennon-Claypool Delerium. If those references signify for you, if you've grooved on the box set Children of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the Second Psychedelic Era, 1976-1995, you'll probably love Look Inside. However, you might want to get your sugar fix there and not venture further into the Asylum Choir. Or at least you should go into the second album expecting something different than the first one. If Look Inside delivers high-quality bubblegum, its follow-up tastes more like homemade falafel, hummus, or baba ganouj.
Benno and Russell recorded Asylum Choir II in 1969 and were joined by studio musicians. The guitarist, Jesse Ed Davis, is now best known for work with Taj Mahal, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. One bassist, Carl Radle, worked with Eric Clapton, including in Derek & the Dominoes. The other bassist, Donald "Duck" Dunn, played on more Stax and other classics than this sentence could possibly do justice to. The drummer, Chuck Blackwell, played with Taj Mahal and Leon Russell as a solo artist. Asylum Choir II wasn't released until 1971, by which time the Asylum Choir was over and Russell had established himself as a star. While Benno and Russell cowrote seven of the songs here, Russell wrote the remaining four by himself, and the collection feels much more like his self-titled, guest-enhanced 1970 solo debut than like the original Asylum Choir. Eschewing his clipped vocal delivery on Look Inside, Russell lets his drawl hang out. Abandoning that first album's tightly controlled, highly produced, mildly psychedelic freneticism, the band sounds organic, relaxed, pleasantly stoned, a bit ragged. Filter Look Inside the Asylum Choir through Music from Big Pink and The Band and you might get Asylum Choir II. Put another way: this Southern-fried music sounds more like 1971, when it was released, than like 1969, when it was recorded. Maybe this analysis comes across as fitting angels on the head of a pin. However, the history matters if the music matters. Oddly, Asylum Choir II has been reissued on CD with most of Look Inside as bonus tracks, as though the first album was just a warm-up. Taken in chronological order, the two Asylum Choir albums illustrate how '60s pop transitioned into '70s rock.
Since the end of the Asylum Choir, Benno has released solo albums. He is most well-known as the second guitarist on the Doors' L.A. Woman (1971), which is one damn great album to be best remembered for. He also played guitar with Rita Coolidge and wrote a song by the System on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Leon Russell's career peaked in the early '70s, when he worked extensively with Joe Cocker, released albums that remain lower-tier classics, and enjoyed hit cover versions of his songs. In the following decades, he experienced partial eclipses and reappearances. His eclipse was nearly total by the time Elton John, a fan from way back, invited him to collaborate on 2010's The Union. Russell died in 2016, his recordings a mix of highs and lows, his time in the Asylum Choir a footnote, even a footnote to a footnote, but a highly entertaining and enlightening one.  From: https://www.furious.com/perfect/asylumchoir.html

PJ Harvey - Naked Cousin

"Naked Cousin" by PJ Harvey explores themes of identity, self-reflection, and the pursuit of freedom. The lyrics depict a complicated relationship between the narrator and their "naked cousin," who serves as a symbol for aspects of the narrator's own self that they dislike or want to distance themselves from. In the first verse, the naked cousin is portrayed as being scared and vulnerable, running around aimlessly in the headland. This can be interpreted as a representation of the narrator's own insecurities and fears, which they may be trying to avoid or escape from.
The line "My naked cousin can cook till he's good and done" can be seen as a metaphorical reference to the cousin's struggle to find his own identity and purpose in life. The image of his skin frying in the sun suggests a sense of discomfort and unease, highlighting the challenges he faces in navigating his own existence. The chorus, which repeats the phrase "He's running," emphasizes the theme of escape and the cousin's constant need to flee from difficult situations or confrontations. It can also be seen as a broader commentary on society, where individuals often find themselves running from various forms of oppression or personal struggles.
The third verse suggests that the cousin is actively running away from anything that disrupts his "master plan." This implies a desire for control and an aversion to anything that challenges his comfort zone or predetermined path. The narrator, on the other hand, acknowledges that if they "flip," they are as good as done, further emphasizing their sense of powerlessness in the face of their cousin's relentless pursuit of freedom. The outro repeats the phrase "He's running" multiple times, accompanied by lyrics that describe the narrator's fear and their willingness to go along with the cousin's escapades. This can be interpreted as a combination of admiration for the cousin's freedom and a desperate plea for the cousin to take them along on their journey. Overall, "Naked Cousin" delves into the complexities of self-perception, the struggle for autonomy, and the constant desire to break free from societal constraints. The use of vivid imagery and repetitive phrases adds to the song's emotional intensity and invites listeners to reflect on their own relationship with identity and freedom.  From: https://www.songtell.com/pj-harvey/naked-cousin

Pauw - Visions

The last couple of years have been a bit of a whirlwind for Dutch psych-rockers Pauw. They have followed hot on the heels of their compatriot Jacco Gardner and just before Christmas unveiled their debut LP Macrocosm Microcosm – a spangly piece of 60s-inspired pop that has drawn comparisons to Tame Impala and Caribou. What’s more, they’ve already bossed some pretty huge spaces after touring with Kasabian and Temples in Europe. The four-piece touched down on UK soil for the first time at last year’s Liverpool Psych Fest, but for those who missed them, we set out to find out a little more about Pauw with frontman Brian Pots.

How has the reaction to the record been?

It’s been amazing, especially in the Netherlands where I think people already knew us.  It was exciting to get the reaction we did because a lot of people had already seen us play live. They have extra patience so it was nice fulfill them. It’s all been positive, really great.

Did the success of those early live shows give you a lot of confidence?

Yeah, it gave us confidence, but also it made us kind of insecure. It put a bit of extra time pressure on recording the album. At the same time we were playing live a lot and we were still studying in school. We had to fit the recording in between these things – and some of the writing because there were still some songs that weren’t properly finished yet. It was pretty heavy, but we made it through!

Have the live shows felt different since you got the record out there?

Some people were singing along, which was pretty cool. The crowds were getting bigger and bigger at shows. Afterwards people were asking for autographs and to take pictures with us. That was all new for us, so it feels pretty amazing.

Was that a strange feeling, the sensation of sudden fame?

Yeah I think so. You know how the process goes, we’re still the same people as before the album came out, we’re still human beings. We couldn’t believe all that stuff at first, but overall it’s pretty cool.

You had some pretty big support slots early on – including Kasabian – how did that help your progression?

It was amazing. Kasabian were a band I was planning on going to see anyway, and then we ended up supporting them! I learned a lot from this experience of playing on the big stage and the whole production that comes with that. The day of the show is really different. There’s a much tighter schedule and obviously a lot more people are coming. Even though we were just the support act the crowd seemed really into our music!

Pauw clearly have an ear for a melody, who are some of your favourite songwriters?

It kind of depends from song to song, but in terms of stuff all four of us are into, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, also The Small Faces and King Crimson. With this particular record we took a lot from the 60s and 70s psychedelic scene.

Psychedelia has had a bit of a resurgence in popularity over the last few years, is that something you have noticed in the Netherlands too?

Yeah, somehow there is some hype from somewhere. There is something going on in the psychedelic scene. We already had our own Jacco Gardner, and you guys in the UK seem to love him too, which is pretty cool. And we have many more, so it’s great to see it is still alive!

Speaking of the UK reaction, how was Liverpool Psych Fest?

It was our first show in the UK and a really great experience. People are coming specifically to see psychedelic music so it was perfect for us. The reaction afterwards was really great, a lot of good reviews. We want all our future shows in the UK to be like this.

What’s next for Pauw? Any early ideas for the second record?

We’ve got some ideas floating around but we’re not really ‘writing’ at the moment. We’re playing live a lot at the the moment and really still focusing on that. But then after we will take some proper time for writing. From tomorrow we’re just going to rehearse for three days and really work on the set we have now. Some of the songs were written in the studio during the process of the recoding. So we need to really get them in our fingers, you know? It’s a bit like we’re playing covers of our own songs!

From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/interview-a-far-out-introduction-to-pauw/

L'Ham de Foc - Voldrien

Cor de Porc is the third record from L'Ham de Foc and on this one they have taken the next logical step and actually lived in the Northern Greek city of Thessaloniki for six months before recording it. The forty hours of material that led to the twelve songs on The Pig's Heart were recorded between Efren Lopez and Mara Aranda's home regions of Valencia and Greece.
What led them to temporarily move to Greece was the need to more carefully explore the Oriental rhythms, still active in the city due to its proximity to their source, and the particular social characteristics of the city. They even utilized some Greek musicians to achieve this, on instruments such as ney, kaval, rebec and Black Sea lyra. Their Iberian spirit is very much alive, particularly in their use of a style of playing from Valencia called the Cant d'Estil, where a poet whispers the lyrics into the singer's ear who then improvises over a fixed melodic line in a mode not too dissimilar from flamenco. They named the record after the eternal human quest to delve deep and unearth the secrets of our existence, just like a pig searching for food. The results are fascinating. L'Ham de Foc have already proved that they can assimilate their influences from across the Mediterranean Sea, but this time they have moved further East, creating what I feel is the first entechno record by someone who is not Greek (a real accolade for a style of interpretation that is based to a great degree on the specific social parameters of Greece) while at the same time staying true to their own homeland.
The daring process that led to this record has produced a work that, while highly idiosyncratic, is rooted in the musical comings and goings of the Mediterranean and the Near East, the vast cultural space extending from Iran and Afghanistan (here lending instruments and modes of playing) to Valencian Spain. Like their previous efforts, there are moments when things might seem to get too serious or involved, but the sparks that fly as a result of this tension lend it a sense of timelessness.  From: https://rootsworld.com/reviews/porc06.shtml

Love - Live And Let Die

Love “Forever Changes” is one of the seminal sixties albums and one of the top psychedelic albums of all times according to serious music fans and critics. The band may not be familiar to many people but Love was Los Angeles’ biggest band before the incredible ascent of the Doors. Love also influenced many of their contemporaries including The Doors, The Seeds and The Strawberry Alarm Clock, and decades later have been a source of inspiration for bands including The Stone Roses, Teenage Fanclub and The Teardrop Explodes.
The early years of Love were defined by the dichotomy of their two lead talents – singer/songwriter/guitarists Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean. By the time they released their third album “Forever Changes” in 1968, the band were in disarray due to broken down relationships and heavy drug use. The recording sessions started with Lee and MacLean enlisting the help of session musicians for the first two songs. As producer Bruce Botnick remembers, “The group were present, too. I remember them physically crying at this session. The band was so shocked, so put out, so hurt that it caused them to forget about their problems and become a band again.”
Despite the tentative start, the final results were groundbreaking. Unlike other bands at the time, Love took cues from many musical sensibilities and fused together psychedelic pop, punk, folk-rock, and Latin with a heavy dose of lush orchestration. The sentiment of “Forever Changes” also set the band apart as it was juxtaposed to the prevalent “Summer of Love” attitude. Instead the album featured dark and brooding lyrics. Writer/producer Harvey Kubernick says, of Lee’s lyrics “He described things that were very menacing. We’re coming out of the Summer of Love, and he’s singing ‘Bummer in the Summer’. He’s talking about racial tensions, tensions between men and women.”
Despite this, the album was the band’s biggest success and even reached the Top 30 in Britain. Upon its release, critics such as Gene Youngblood of LA Free Press hailed the album, “Soft, subtle. Forever changing in tonal color, rhythm patterns, vocal nuances, lyric substance. Exquisite nuances.” Contemporary critics now view the album as a major musical turning point as Pete Pashides of The Sunday Times declares, “Forever Changes preserves, in notes, words and breathtaking energy, the precise moment that 1960s idealism started to sour.”  From: https://classicalbumsundays.com/love-forever-changes/

Children of the Sun - Reflection

Things don't always have to be related to negativity and the depression that has been going on worldwide, instead, life could be celebrated, enjoy the now and the hope that it could be better one day. There has been a long line of positivity, yet, most of it died after the 60s, leaving a huge gap for the actual reality to take over. The Swedish Hippies, Children of the Sün, wished to head back decades ago in a spiritual way and relive the Flower Kids through music. Steinmetal talked to Jacob Hellenrud of the band, about being a Hippie type of band, working with a new label, the new album "Flowers" and more.

Hello Jacob, it is a pleasure having you for this interview for Metal Temple online Magazine, how have you been doing?

Hi! It's going great! A bit stressful with all that comes with releasing an album and going back to school again and so on... But I couldn't be happier!

Well, it is not every day for me that I interview non-Metal artist, yet I must say that I find your band Children Of The Sün quite intriguing. Let's start a little about the band, how did this group came to be?

The band was formed in 2017 in the deep woods of Värmland in Sweden after a soul-concert our school made. So you could say in a way that the soul brought us together. Our bass-player and lead-singer wanted to create a Rock band and play covers by idols of theirs such as Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin, but when I got involved we started to write our own music. Soon people started to join our music collective and after a couple of weeks we were Children of the Sün, and hopefully we'll never stop playing.

Recently, you guys released your new album "Flowers", via The Sign Records, absolutely the right platform to hash this album out. How has it been received by your fanbase? What is your overall appreciation of the end result?

It has been really cool to be able to work with The Sign Records. We are all big fans of other bands at the label and to be a part of it is a dream come true. The album has got a good receive I believe from our old fans but we've noticed that we've get a lot of new fans along the road as well, and for that we are grateful. We are satisfied with the result and we hope that more people will discover 'Flowers'.

Why title it "Flowers"? What is the philosophy behind it?

We wanted to make a concept-album about earth in the beginning. And for that reason we wanted to use flowers as a metaphor for humans. We grow from being a seed to become this beautiful flower. None looks the same. But everyone is beautiful. It's also our reincarnation in a way. It is Children of the Sün becoming one with nature. The rest is up to the listener to discover their own idea of what the album is to them.

Children Of The Sün's music is obvious at first, especially the leading characteristic of the hippie movement in the notes. However, I sense that it is much more than that. There is Soul, classic Rock, Blues, a bit of vintage Folk Rock, a chance for the listener to sway between the lines. Do you agree with that assessment?

I would totally agree. We love music, and we love writing music. We don't define ourselves with just one genre, rather we write music with the world as our inspiration. Maybe that is a reason why the songs sound kind of different to each other sometimes. It's a musical goulash of all the music that we love.

What do you guys find so fascinating about the 60s? In particular, since your music sounds like a fine homage for the Woodstock Festival?

Simple. We are old souls in young bodies. Basically we're born in the wrong era. After hours digging through our parents' vinyl collections, we've all found a connection to this particular genre and era. It touches a bit of your soul and gets you high on music, and that's still legal. The music doesn't have algorithms made by a computer - It is made by real people with real feelings. That for us is very important because we put a lot of emotions into our own songs. We think that it is impossible to create something with emotional value without putting a bit of your soul into it.

In your songwriting, how were you able to connect Rock music, and its surroundings, with spirituality?

I think that they go well together. Often the spirituality comes first and it's the main focus of each song. Then we lay the groove to back it up.

Was the songwriting for "Flowers" a joint effort or rather an effort of a leading musician that carried it forward?

I almost always come up with the idea of the songs. Then Josefina writes the lyrics. Then we combine the two and arrange it together with the rest of the band. It is at this point the song becomes more than a just a demo, for every member of the band contributes with their own experience and their own style of playing the instrument.

Would you say that "Flowers" is a piece that represents that there is still hope for this world or there is rather an inner message suggesting otherwise? Does "Flowers" symbolize a string of positivity?

Even though many songs are about depression and anxiety about the climate, there are more songs about taking care of each other and becoming one with earth. So it's a balance between good and bad. But it is a record about more than hope. It's a celebration of life.

Continuing with that direction, how can such harmony, as you present in your music, exist in such a world, where apparently society is slowly decaying, as plenty of the harsher music artists suggest?

Music is hope, music is what unites people and music is healing. Therefore, we can never lose hope. But we can try to affect people with our music. I agree with you, but we can never stop living. If we do, then it's already too late.

How did the connection with The Sign Records came to pass? Was it mutual interest by both parties?

It's actually kind of funny. We reached out to The Sign Records two years ago when we were going to release our debut EP. We didn't get any answers back then. But a couple of weeks before we signed with The Sign we got a mail from Kaj at the label saying; “Sorry for the late response”. But the important thing is that they responded and we couldn't be luckier to be able to work with them. They are professionals dealing with 8 kids that wants to play music. Respect to them for dealing with us.

Which of the album's songs do you find the most meaningful to you? Please elaborate on your pick.

I would have to say "Flowers". It's a different song for us. I wrote it as a metaphor for earth. The song is touching more in the folk genre which I love and it's easy to listen to and remember the hook. It's hard to describe what I think is so good about it, but I really enjoyed writing it and I enjoy playing it. I don't think that it is the strongest song on the album, but it has an aura of sitting in the forest and just listening to what nature has to say to you.

What are your plans to support "Flowers" in the coming future?

For now, we are looking for bookers in Europe. A dream would be to buy a “hippie van” and drive through Europe and play at every venue that wants us. But for the future we want to make a new album with new songs and try out things we haven't done before, maybe add more instruments? We'll see!

From: https://metal-temple.com/interview/jacob-hellenrud-children-of-the-sun/

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Sessions at West 54th Street 1997

I've always been a big fan of Gillian Welch's albums. She and her musical partner, Dave Rawlings, made two records (Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings) for Almo Sounds with producer T Bone Burnett that I enjoyed. But it was the next album, the Dave Rawlings-produced Time (The Revelator) on their own Acony Records, which put them onto my desert island list. It's quietly stunning, both musically and sonically, and Gillian's new album The Harrow & The Harvest is equally as strong. I got a chance to speak with them while they were on tour supporting Buffalo Springfield. At first they seemed a bit bored by yet another interview, but when I mentioned I wanted Dave to stay in the room so we could talk about recording, they both visibly perked up. Although Dave is credited with production, Gillian also has some deep knowledge and opinions on recording. As befits two people who have worked together for over a decade, they often finish each other's sentences and thoughts. Their strong connection as musical partners is evident.

Time (The Revelator) is one of my favorite records. I think it's a classic album.

G: We made it in the old RCA Studio B in Nashville that was built in the late '50s. It had no gear in there.

D: We were looking for a recording space and I had been driving around Nashville trying to find an old studio to rent, or possibly buy. One day I drove by Studio B and the door was open. I thought, "Oh my God, that's Studio B. I've never been in there." I walked in, heard my footsteps on the floor and knew that I liked the sound of the room. Bob Moore was there that day — Elvis's bass player. He just happened to stop by. I was really interested in [renting] it. I then found out that the Country Music Hall of Fame — who had been running a lot of tours through it and whatnot — were building the new Hall of Fame. In the interim they were going to be too busy to do anything with RCA B. We approached them through a friend who was on their board and they said would it be all right if we brought our gear in and rented it on a monthly basis. They treated it as a donation to the new Hall of Fame, which was real nice. We rented it out for about 14 months. When we first got in there, I spent a month or two cleaning out the troughs and I fixed the plate reverbs. The place hadn't been used much as a professional space in quite a while.

G. It had not been a functioning studio.

But they had a little bit of gear, like the plates?

D: They had the plates in the other room and they had somebody doing some karaoke sessions out of the live room. The control room was basically empty.

G: The speakers were still there.

D: Oh yeah, the old Altec 604s were still there, but they needed to be fixed.

Is that what you monitored on?

D: It was mainly [Yamaha] NS-10s and the Altecs. What we ended up bringing in was all the gear from the home studio — stuff that we've assembled over the years. Our tape machine is a [Studer] A800.

Is it 24- or 16-track?

D: 16-track. I actually bought the headstack before the machine. I found some unused 16-track heads when I was buying some other gear, and I threw those in. Then I found a 24-track machine. What else?

G: The Neve desk.

D: Yeah, we started buying [Neve] 1084s really early on. I bought a BCM-10 frame and every time we went on tour I would come back and buy a couple more modules. I found some other 1084s from the next console made, so the serial numbers were still pretty continuous. We hadn't filled the frame for ...Revelator, but we had enough — we only needed four or five.

G: That board came out of WGBH Boston. It was the old Sesame Street board.

So it had a Muppet vibe.

D: Yeah, rubber ducky. I got this other old BCM-10-style console made by Neve that has 1055 modules in it; they're the wide, black ones with three fixed bands. They basically have a high, low and a mid — you can't select the frequency — and 10 dB steps. They are very unforgiving with transients; they really don't like anything barking. There is distortion all over our records because of those modules.

Does it squash the transients or distort?

D: They break up in a weird tear-y way. If you hit them with the top of a vocal it will have a little "kkkrrrrrr" on it. I would go through those, as well as the 1084 at line level to get five dB gradiation; as a buffer stage. I had some 1084s that bypassed the fader, and those were the ones that I used before the tape machine. So the signal chain was two [Neumann] M 49s, a [Sony] C-37a on my guitar and an M 582 Neumann on Gil's guitar. There are other setups: "Dear Someone" would have been an Altec 639a, one of those birdcage mics, with a [Neumann] U 67 right on top of it. They end up perfectly out of phase and you just flip them. We were in there and we would have to break down every couple days 'cause they would run a tour, so we weren't able to leave the mics set up or anything. It was a difficult process.

G: With us, millimeters of difference in the mic setups are huge because the picture is so affected by overall phase between our four mics.

D: Everything is pretty close together.

How far apart are the two of you when recording?

G: Two and a half feet. As close as can be.

D: Some days we would set up, the phase would be great and everything would click in. Then a tour would come through and we would have to tear down. We got a little rug with everything spiked, but we would have to get within millimeters. That's the difference with this new record. Since we were finally working in our own studio, we set up and we never touched the mics.

So a lot of the same gear has made it from record to record?

D: Yeah. There are two tracks on Hell Among the Yearlings that we did at home on those same preamps. By then we also had the [Neumann] M 49s. That was the beginning of what I look at as that incarnation of duets, like "Miner's Refrain" and "Rock of Ages." "Rock" is a banjo song, so it's a little different because I used a [Neumann] U 47 on the banjo.

You had 14 months to make Time (The Revelator). However, it wasn't really 14 months because you were constantly interrupted?

D: We made that record in five weeks. Most of the album was probably created within three weeks, and then there was a little bit of time on either side. I also produced part of the first Old Crow Medicine Show record in that time period. We just happened to be renting the studio for that long.

How long did Harrow & The Harvest take to record?

G: Four weeks. That's about how long our records take.

Is everything recorded live?

G: Totally.

D: Yeah, everything is live. It is pretty much all from takes one, two or three. Very few mixes. This is the first record we've done that Stephen Marcussen [our mastering engineer] listened to and said, "Okay, Let's transfer it." We didn't compress or EQ anything. Just transferred it from a machine of his that we really like, through the nice converters and a clean signal chain.

When you are two-feet away from each other there is no way you are going to punch in and fix a part.

G: We have never done that.

D: About half the songs on the album are complete takes. Five of them are composites of adjacent takes. G: Edits between takes.

Edits on the 2-inch master tape?

D: Yeah, I do a lot of 2-inch editing. I've always done that.

G: Dave's really good at editing. I'd put him up against anybody at this point, because he's not even getting to cut on drums. [Drums make it easier to find the edit points. -ed.]

D: I know where the edits are on this record, but they are pretty hard to find. I bet you can find a few on ...Revelator.

G: But I don't even mind. I like the sound of a tape edit.

Sometimes they're cool. It can totally change the ambience in an unexpected way.

D: Yeah, as long as it's musical.

What speed, 15 ips?

D: 30 ips. I think Soul Journey was at 15, but everything else we have done was at 30.

Why 15 for Soul Journey?

D: Drums. There was more of that vibe. There might be a couple [of songs] at 30, but I just wanted to try it. But that was a very different rig. That was mostly [Shure] SM57s and API preamps.

Was that still mostly tracked live with the band?

D: Yeah. The only thing I should say is that I overdubbed some organ on a few things. I'm a terrible [Hammond] B3 organ player, but if I get one pass at something I usually do a really good job. So I go in, do one pass and that's it.

G: One band song went down without any singing and I had to go back in and sing.

D: We were jamming with the chords of it and it sounded good, but then I think we used your scratch vocal to see if it worked.

Do you have an engineer helping you?

D: We have worked pretty closely with Matt Andrews in Nashville for a while now, and our methodology has developed around the three of us. I'm not in the control room while we are tracking, so we rely on Matt, to some degree. We have some sense of whether or not we are getting there, but it's always good to have another set of ears. If we are going to be editing between takes, it's generally good to get parts from adjacent takes. I suppose I handle most of the responsibilities that you'd associate with a producer.

G: We all listen and weigh in on what the good takes are. Happily, we pretty much agree. It's pretty evident.

Do you do the mixing?

D: I do a lot of mixing. On The Harrow & The Harvest, we weren't really moving faders very much — we never really ride stuff. For most mixes we set the faders and let them run. It's very rare for there to be fader moves within a song. Matt did a lot of live mixing, where he would get the picture a particular way. If we liked it when we came in, we might only tweak things slightly. He did a lot of riding the preamps and then we would adjust from there as far as color and compression.

I'm assuming you work out the arrangements well in advance and bring them in?

G: No.

D: Some of the writing goes down in the studio.

G: It's a very "in the moment" dynamic process.

D: The improvisation is usually better early on, and of course you always have time later if you fail.

G: I tend to be... the positive way to say it is that I'm really consistent. But once I've been playing a song for a while it tends to solidify for me. That can be a problem if we are having trouble recording something, as it's unlikely that I'm going to change what I'm doing enough to make a difference. Dave's really good at suggesting arrangements. But, even broader than that, he creates musical changes that really crack things open. For instance, having me move from guitar to banjo or totally recasting a song from major to minor. A lot of these songs are very spontaneous takes on a new arrangement or even new music.

D: "Hard Times" is the second time Gil ever played it on banjo. The first take is un-listenable 'cause there are so many chord mistakes.

G: It's clam city.

D: As the second take was going down, I knew it was magic. I actually cut the solo short because I didn't want there to be any more time — I wanted less time for things to go wrong.

G: He shot me this look of, "Start singing again."

D: Let's get through the fucking thing! It was moving me so much.

G: "Six White Horses" was maybe one of the first times we ever performed it, with me hamboning and with you at the rack [harmonica]. This runs through the whole record — it's very spontaneous

D: ...but only after quite a bit of writing and working. The studio time is the culmination of the writing. "The Way the Whole Thing Ends," has approximately 25 verses. The studio is where we figure out how long the songs need to be and where to cut them down. It was the same situation with "I Dream a Highway;" it's a very long song and I thought it was appropriate for it to remain long. Most of the time they get better if you shrink them, but that one seemed nice long.

G: We had only ever sung that twice.

D: I said, "We shouldn't ever play that until we...

G: 'Til we have tape rolling."

D:We didn't know if it would fit on a reel. I cut out a couple of verses in the final — that's a composite of takes one and two.

You've done enough records in this format, and it seems like it's quick to get set up with Matt.

G: The interesting thing about this record is that we had never had a room that was great sounding to do duet records in at Woodland Sound Studios [Gillian and Dave's studio].

D: We made Soul Journey in the A room at Woodland. We have tried several times to do acoustic stuff — even during the first record with T Bone. We worked in Woodland in '95 and tried to do some acoustic stuff, but never really got anything satisfactory. AES held an event where they brought in Glenn Snoddy, who'd built the studio. We looked at the room and realized that what we didn't like was basically a '90s renovation. So we took the B room and tore it down to studs. We took the wood floor up and basically restored it to how it was in the '60s, when it was built, with linoleum floor and acoustic tiles — basically the same construction as RCA B, which is what Woodland B was built to mirror. We didn't know what we were going to get. We came back, finished the trim, worked for a few weeks, buffing the floor with the same wax compound. Then we set up mics and did one take of a song that ended up being an outtake. The next thing we played was "The Way it Will Be." We did one take of that and it was a master. We felt like, "Okay, this room is working well." ...Revelator sits back in speakers in a very nice, mysterious way — The Harrow & The Harvest throws out the speakers and combines in the space you are in.

G: ...Revelator you have to listen into more. I feel like this new record comes out.

Tell me a little bit about working with T Bone Burnett. How did the transition go from working with him to essentially producing yourselves?

G: I kind of learned how to make records from him. Rik Pekkonen (engineer on Revival) and T Bone came up with our mic'ing rig.

D: From the first days of Revival, we had Gil sing into a [Neumann] [U] 47, [U] 67 and an [M] 49. It was pretty apparent to everyone that the 49 was a great mic for her. When we got done, Rik Pekkonen sent me a very nice list of, "This is what you would need to buy in order to make professional recordings." We started out with an [Ampex] ATR-102 and a couple of U 67s.

G: T Bone is really the one that pushed us to have a recording rig in our house.

D: ...and the methodology when it comes to tape editing. That's how T Bone was working at the time. In my mind we record in a mid '70's methodology, and I think that's the pinnacle of fidelity in the recording world.

G: We have to capture a performance and T Bone got that. That's why he said, "Have a way to record in your house."

It sounds like he really encouraged you guys to move into producing yourselves.

D: In a way, he forced us into it. He was not around at the end of either of the first two records. We mastered Revival without him. T Bone is an incredibly talented, fantastic producer. Listen to his track record and listen to his music. But oftentimes he is working on a lot of things, and he had a lot more energy at the beginning of these projects than he did at the end. There are tracks on Hell Among the Yearlings that he never heard before the record was out. That's just the truth of it — we needed to finish the record.

G: You would be hard-pressed to find someone who commences a project with more inspiration and enthusiasm than T Bone.

D: The man is a genius.

G: I think it is part of his process of how he goes to the next project. He has to mentally get out of the one he is in. Sometimes that happens before the record is done, if that makes sense.

From: https://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawlings/

Soundgarden - MTV Live 'n' Loud 1996

Upon its release on March 8, 1994, Superunknown wasn’t just a highly anticipated album from a critically acclaimed rock band—its multi-platinum success and Grammy wins practically felt predestined. This was Soundgarden’s long overdue turn to come out on top. Though they were the first late-’80s Seattle-scene spawn to sign to a major label, and dutifully embarked upon traditional career-building exercises like opening stadium tours for Guns N' Roses, they would be soundly leapfrogged on the charts by their Emerald City peers in Nirvana and Pearl Jam; by comparison, Soundgarden’s metallic sonatas were seemingly too knotty (and naughty) to inspire the same magnitude of crossover success. Sure, 1991’s Badmotorfinger landed a bare-chested Chris Cornell on the cover of SPIN, and an MTV ban of the allegedly blasphemous “Jesus Christ Pose” video brought the band more attention than if the station had actually aired it, but Soundgarden appeared destined to be the perennial bronze medalists in the Grunger Games.
By early 1994, however, the playing field had changed considerably: Though Pearl Jam were still the most popular rock band in America, they were actively trying to be the least visible one, declaring a moratorium on videos and interviews in an orchestrated (and ultimately successful) campaign to kill their own hype. Nirvana, likewise, were in the midst of a similar retreat, and though their story had yet to reach its tragic conclusion, ominous warning signs were in the air. But as a band that enjoyed a steadier ascent than their flannelled friends—and whose records got progressively better after jumping to a major—Soundgarden didn’t seem so conflicted about success. Their response to the Seattle-scene media storm wasn’t to try to avoid it, but transcend it, and embrace the opportunity to, for a moment, become the biggest band in the land.
Usually, it’s a bad sign when the wild-child frontman of your favorite group cuts his hair and starts wearing shirts. But the clean-cut Cornell that emerged with Superunknown was emblematic of the album’s mission to deliver maximal effect with minimal histrionics. With its despairing worldview, gold-plated production, and CD-stuffing 71-minute running time, Superunknown is a quintessential ’90s artifact. But thanks to its still-formidable high-wire balance of hooks and heft, the album nonetheless represents, some 20 years later, the platonic ideal of what a mainstream hard rock record should be. And even if that’s an ideal to which few contemporary bands aspire (aside from, say, Queens of the Stone Age), Superunknown remains a useful model for any left-of-center artist hoping to achieve accessibility without sacrificing identity.
For Soundgarden, the push toward pop was the result of incremental evolutions rather than a spectacular leap. Where Badmotorfinger introduced flashes of psychedelia and paisley-patterned melody amid Kim Thayil’s pulverizing riffage, on Superunknown, these elements become featured attractions. The once-oblique John Lennon references gave way to unabashed homage—centerpiece power ballad “Black Hole Sun” is pretty much “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” turned upside down and dropped in a heap of soot and coal. That song counts as Superunknown’s most wanton act of subversion—setting its apocalyptic imagery to a tune so pretty, even Paul Anka can dig it—but if that element of surprise has been diluted by two decades of perpetual rock-radio rotation, the album boasts a wealth of less celebrated deep cuts (the queasy psych-folk of “Head Down,” the dread-ridden doom of “4th of July”) that retain a palpable sense of unease.
Even the album’s eternal fist-pump anthems—“The Day I Tried to Live”, “Fell on Black Days”, “My Wave”—are infected with misanthropy and malaise, making Superunknown the rare arena-rock album that makes just as much sense in blacked-out bedroom. (And yet, despite the junkie intimations of its title, “Spoonman” is really just about a man who plays with spoons.) That said, if you don’t hate the world now quite as much as did when you were 18, you may find yourself skipping over the leaden likes of “Mailman” and “Limo Wreck,” while developing a newfound appreciation for how bassist Ben Shepherd’s India-inspired oddity, “Half”, injects a welcome dose of absurdity into the mix.
By fortuitous coincidence, Superunknown hit stores the same day as Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral, an album boasting a similarly expansive scope and thematic framework, albeit approached from a drastically different set of influences (’80s new wave, goth, and electro as opposed to ’60s classic rock). The connection between the two albums is strong enough that the two bands toured together in 1994 and—despite some shit-talkin’ in the interim—are reuniting once again this summer for a joint-20th-anniversary jaunt. For casual Soundgarden fans who still own the record, a concert ticket may ultimately be a more efficient way of celebrating Superunknown’s birthday than by shelling out for this reissue (available in two-and five-CD box set iterations), whose bonus material mostly amounts to demos and rehearsal tapes that cast this epic album in a more normalizing light. However, you do develop a greater appreciation for the final product when you hear the ideas that got scrapped along the away or relegated to B-sides, like the dirgey embryonic arrangement of “Fell on Black Days” (a.k.a. “Black Days III”), the free-form ambient stew of “Jerry Garcia’s Finger”, and a club-friendly industrial funk mix of “Spoonman” by Steve Fisk that sounds like a test run for his beat-driven project Pigeonhed.
You also get a glimpse of the band’s future course with a beautifully spare acoustic treatment of “Like Suicide” that points the way to 1996’s more temperate Down on the Upside, the album that effectively triggered Soundgarden’s subsequent 13-year break-up. But then the go-for-broke, peak-conquering triumphalism of Superunknown was itself a harbinger that the writing was on the wall for this band at the time. When Cornell sings, “Alive in the superunknown” on the album’s acid-swirled title track, it’s both a valorous testament to Soundgarden’s last-gang-in-town fortitude and a telling prophecy of the uncertainty to come, with grunge’s early ’90s stranglehold on alt-rock radio soon to be loosened by the emergence of pop-punk, Britpop, electronica, and nu-metal. But amid a musical landscape now splintered into infinite subgenres, Superunknown remains the very definition of no-qualifiers-required rock—a tombstone for a once-dominant aesthetic, perhaps, but also a solid, immovable mass that endures no matter how dramatically its surroundings have changed.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19407-soundgarden-superunknown/