Click here to download Walking Through That Door from Daytrotter
Here's a weird one.
The recording practices I observe--using tape, eschewing computers--are esoteric, arcane, and time-consuming. The reasons behind this way of working are varied and might take several boring pages to explain, so in the interest of saving time I'll just say that I like the way it sounds.
But it will probably still seem odd to some people that I included Future Islands, a three-piece from Baltimore (by way of North Carolina) in this list. Why should this come as a surprise?
For starters, they used a laptop in their live set. Secondly, the laptop was basically just there to play backing tracks out of Ableton, over which the guys in the band--bass, synth, and vocals--performed.
Granted, this was all blasting through a huge, clunked-up P.A. that took the guys four or five trips back and forth from their raw-looking van to lug in.
Additionally, the okay- or not-okay-ness of playing along with pre-recorded tracks is outside of the purview of this blog.
But I will say that in my own touring apparatus, we have a few unspoken rules: the drums should always be live, the guitars should be played through no more than one effects pedal at a time, and if a keyboard is to be employed, it should be at least 40-years old and have the unmanageable weight and awkward bulk appropriate to an item of its vintage. Again, I just like the way this stuff sounds.
All that said, who cares? As long as the songs are great and the performances are compelling then any use of tracks, Ableton loops, samples, and/or Nord's is forgiven.
The songs that Future Islands' played for me on the day of their taping hinted at some of the late-70's Bowie stuff, early OMD, and New Order, but like most original music it defies easy categorization, to the extent that the trio have self-applied a hazy, catch-all descriptor: "post-wave." That's probably as apt a description as anyone else's that's floating around out there.
And as it turned out, Future Islands used their P.A. in the same way as, say, Coxsone Dodd would have used a sound system; I got the impression that they played a lot of weird warehouses and DIY spaces, and having a huge, bass-heavy P.A. with them at all times was a matter of logistical convenience.
After their P.A. was lugged in and set up, the band's keyboard player, Gerritt Welmers, was really the only one with anything left to do; Welmers set up the Ableton rig and two keyboards while William Cashion just plugged his bass into one of my amps.
The singer, Sam Herring, paced around the live room in a white t-shirt, white pants, and Chuck Taylors. His sideburns were shaved all the way up to the ear line. He would have made a good extra in Blade Runner.
The musical core of the song I'm featuring here is comprised of a stomping kick-hat-snare beat, Cashion's melodic eighth-note bass part, and Welmers searing, warbly synth lead, with the true pathos of the song carried through Herring's crazy-sounding delivery.
When Herring began to sing I was genuinely surprised. His voice was a coruscating growl that could modulate from plaintive whispering to theatrical belting in a matter of just a few syllables. It's Herring's voice more than anything that will keep you transfixed.
If I could have changed one thing about the way the signals were routed to tape, I would have tried to separate the beat from the rest of the track so I could have made it have more impact, but Welmers was pretty adamant about leaving the mix the way he had it pre-configured. I'm still pretty proud of the way it all came out, Ableton or no.
--January 22, 2012
To download the Future Islands' Daytrotter session mp3's, click here
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