Le Noises

UNKNOWN MUSICAL PLACES

Daniel Lanois has long had a penchant for creating noise, dating from his ambient days at Grant Avenue studios in Hamilton, Ontario, in the late ’70s and early ’80s. For this reason those around him sometimes call him Lanoise, and Neil Young very aptly chose to play with this for the title of his new album. Lanois himself has spoken in some recent interviews of the excitement and wonder he felt around music as a child, and his above reference to his ambient period, plus the broad noise strokes of Le Noise in particular, all seem to suggest a refocusing and reconnecting with the excitement and experimental spirit of his early days. But it’s not easy to get clarity on this from Lanois. Whether to do with the difficult phone connection or not, on this particular New York morning Lanois seemed to favour brevity over eloquence, and ambiguousness over directness.

“Thank you for noticing the qualities of grit and freedom in these new albums,” replied Lanois. “I like the broad brush stroke analogy. It’s a very painterly way of looking at things, and I love for music to have pictures. That part of my work has never changed: I like things to be cinematic. I also think the detail is always there in my work. The first impression of the Neil Young record is perhaps that it’s raw, with not much done to it, but on close inspection some beautiful work has been done to the details.”

With regards to the cinematic aspect of Lanois’ work, that’s been rapidly expanding in recent years, and plays a crucial role in both Le Noise and Black Dub. In 2007, together with Adam CK Vollick, Lanois created the hour-long documentary Here Is What Is – a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Lanois’ work as a producer. Lanois appears to be enthusiastic about the virtues of visually documenting and publishing his own efforts online, because the internet is currently awash with videos of Black Dub. Apparently it was one of these online videos that alerted Neil Young to Lanois’ current work, and resulted in him contacting his fellow-Canadian with the request to help him make an acoustic album…

HOWARD’S TRAVELLING STUDIO

With Lanois often hazy and hard to hear, and, as we shall see, also reticent to answer technical questions, some extra input was crucial in digging out more of the story of the making of the Neil Young and Black Dub albums. Enter Mark Howard, who engineered the former album and engineered and co-mixed (with Lanois) the latter. Howard has worked off and on with Lanois since joining him at Grant Avenue Studios in 1987 and helping him record Acadie. While being engineer on Lanois-produced albums by Gabriel, Dylan, Nelson and The Neville Brothers, the British-born Canadian has also gone on to make a big name for himself as an independent engineer, mixer, and producer, having worked in the latter capacity with Lucinda Williams, Marianne Faithful, Chris Whitley… even Augie March. The Le Noise and Black Dub albums mark the first time Lanois and Howard have worked together since U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000).

According to Howard, the first seeds for Black Dub were sown two years ago, when he recorded a live show by Lanois in Toronto, during which a song called Ring The Alarm was “a bit of a winner.” In addition, both Howard and Lanois had been working out of Jamaica, and the former recalled that he was “pushing Dan to make a record using dub techniques.” Add the fact that Trixie Whitley – the spectacular young Belgian-American singer, daughter of the late blues singer Chris Whitley – had come of age and turned out to be formidable singer, and Lanois suddenly had the ingredients for a group and a new direction. At this point, however, the exact story of the making of the Black Dub album becomes hazy, because the narrative that has done the rounds in the press and on the internet turns out to be incorrect. In a record company blurb Lanois is quoted as saying that Black Dub, was “often recorded live. One take. No overdubs. It’s a very old-fashioned idea really.” Understandably, the same story has since been highlighted everywhere as part of the raison d’etre of Black Dub.

However, when Lanois was asked for more details, it turned out that only one song on the album was, in fact, recorded live in one take in the studio. The producer revealed: “Surely was recorded the day after I wrote it, as a first take – no overdubs. We’re quite proud of that. It’s a nice reminder of how things can be done. There are other songs that are completely the opposite, like Slow Baby, which is very much me as a studio rat blending machines with flesh, which is still a challenge that I operate by these days. Some of the tracks on the album have been around for years. Love Lives and Slow Baby were tracks that I recorded in Mexico in the ’90s and never had a home for. I Believe In You was recorded in Toronto; two tracks were done in Bono’s house in France; we did some of the singing in Los Angeles; some of the album was recorded in Jamaica.”

And so, contrary to the one-band-one-take-one-location impression given, it turns out that Black Dub was recorded over a period of more than a decade, in a multitude of studios, using a multitude of methods. Certainly, Lanois has long been famous for popularising the idea of on-location recording, with musicians and the production team all in the same room (Peter Gabriel constructed his Real World Studios around the concept). Lanois famously built a studio in a regular townhouse in New Orleans, after that in a rock house in Mexico, followed by his Teatro studio in an old movie theatre in Oxnard in southern California, and so on. The last couple of times Lanois was interviewed by yours truly, in 2005 and 2009, he was happy to talk about having two stationary studios, housed in normal buildings in Toronto and in Silverlake, California. The latter held, he said, most of his old analogue equipment, like “a bunch of Neve mixing desks,” including “a very large 48-channel 8068, and many small desks, like the BCM10, Melbourn, and Kelso.” The Toronto facility, meanwhile, was built around a Midas Heritage 4000.

Neil Young’s Le Noise was indeed made with the one-man-one-take-one-place method, and in two video interviews posted on Neil Young’s YouTube channel Lanois speaks at length about the importance of the Silverlake house in the making of this album. But when speaking from New York, he related that the Silverlake studio has since been dismantled and that he currently lives in Jamaica, and travels with his suitcase studio. He elaborated: “I have a Radar 24-track digital machine and the home-made preamps that I worked on with Mark Howard and my brother Bob, and that’s it. I don’t use EQ or anything. I go straight from the preamps to the Radar. I’ll listen back through a mixer of some kind – depending on where I am that might be a Midas 4000 or even a small Mackie mixer. I don’t care. I can make records on anything! Or anywhere. I did some of the work on Neil’s record in a hotel room. In that case I’ll work with two DAT recorders. It allows me to work on an already existing mix, do treatments, record them on another DAT, and I’ll later spin that back into the Radar. What other tools do I use? I’m not telling!” (Stand-offish silence, then laughter.)

RELIABLE PLATFORM

Time to bring on Mark Howard, who wasn’t only happy to spill the beans on the nature of the paints, brushes, palette and other kit that Lanois and he use for their sonic painting, but also painted a fascinating picture of a guerrilla-approach to recording – go on location heavily armed with gear, set up, do what needs to be done, and get out again without any further delay. “For each project I work on, I do an installation with my own gear. When I recorded and mixed Tom Waits’ Real Gone (2004), I set up in an old school house close to where he lived. When I did Lucinda Williams’ World Without Tears (2003) I put up all my gear in a room in the Paramour Estate building in Silverlake. It was the same with Neil Young’s record. I set up, did the record, and then tore the installation down. It’s a great way to make records, because there are no budgets anymore, and working this way means I don’t have any overheads. You also don’t fall into the same routines of always having the same drum setup in the same place etc. I’ve been making records like this for 23 years, and it allows for a lot of creative accidents to happen and as a result I’m always discovering new sounds.

“Dan and I each have our rigs, and when I make records I bring my own. Like him I have an IZ Radar 24 and my preamps are the GP2 BL990, which were designed by Dan’s brother Bob 20 years ago. These two pieces of gear are my main rig. I also have a Tascam DM3200 digital desk that I use when I travel abroad, which is an amazing piece of kit. It’s totally automated and sounds punchy and warm. If I’m in Los Angeles I’ll strap a bunch of Neve BCM10 sidecars together. I’ll also have some outboard and mics, like the RCA44 ribbon mic – one of the best microphones ever made for recording drums or vocals. I used it a lot on the Tom Waits record. Nowadays with everything being digital, a lot of things sound very harsh and hard to listen to, so my routine is to record a bright sounding instrument with a dark mic, which gives a creamier, warmer sound. Other than Neve desks we don’t use too much vintage stuff, though. It sounds great, but it can drive you crazy. You spend half your time getting vintage gear to work. That’s why I have this solid state system with the preamps and the Radar and the Tascam.”

SLY DREAM

The Black Dub and Le Noise albums were recorded in Howard and Lanois’ guerrilla-like “installations,” going as far back as a studio the duo built in Mexico in the early ’90s, where Lanois recorded, among other things, his solo albums Shine and parts of Belladonna. Howard explained: “In 1994 we set up in Todos Santos in Mexico in a house that was cut into natural rock, with a grass roof over an open front section, and no windows. It was like living outside, and birds and scorpions and centipedes would come in. We called it ‘The Bird Nest.’ We recorded a lot of material there that wasn’t used at the time, and when Dan and I decided to do the Black Dub record two years ago, we wondered what else we could put on, and I started bringing out all this archive stuff that we’d recorded in Mexico. We were listening to it, and went: “Wow, this is great! It sounds incredible!’ So we built on top of that. The basic tracks for songs like Canaan, Silverado, Slow Baby, and I Believe In You, were recorded in Mexico.”

As Lanois mentioned above, overdubs to the Mexico material, laying down new tracks, and treatments were done in Toronto, Jamaica, France, Los Angeles, and wherever else Lanois found himself. One noteworthy track is Last Time, which features a heavily distorted vocal recorded and framed in an unusual way. Lanois: “That’s Brian Blade’s father Brady singing. We didn’t have any recording equipment, all we had was a camera, so that’s what we worked with. I didn’t add any of the distortion; it all came from the camera. I started with that vocal and built everything else around it. I let that fragment decide the tempo and the pitch of everything and also let it be governor of the groove I created. So yeah, there are quite a few overdubs on Black Dub. In a lot of cases there’s a rhythm box, like on Silverado I’m mixing a rhythm box with real drums, which I love to do. I also did that on Slow Baby. I love referencing Sly & The Family Stone’s song In Time, from the album Fresh, which is a beautiful mixture of beat box and templates. It’s a dream of mine to reach that level of excellence.”

Sly’s Fresh album, particularly the song In Time is often referenced as a recording that sounds extremely alive, with everybody audibly having fun.

In the record company’s Black Dub press release, Lanois is trying to evoke a similar spirit, saying, “No cuts. No edits. It’s clear that people still have an appetite for something honest and authentic with real musicians playing live. In these sad times of pre-packaged music, people yearn to experience something soulful, heartfelt, something meaningful. As simple as it sounds, real music is a rare commodity these days.” Yet given the reality of how Black Dub was recorded, Lanois seems to indicate that creating “real music” is more about a state of mind than necessarily using the one-band-one-room-one-take method. It’s a philosophy that’s he’s arguably managed to bring to fruition more effectively on Le Noise and Black Dub than ever before in his career, hence “finally getting it right.” Mark Howard, who nails his colours to the mast by using “realmusic” as part of his e-mail address, seems to second this.

“The performances on Black Dub, and also Le Noise, aren’t perfect,” explained Howard. “Instead, they have a vibe and a soul. Some people think that the more times you play something, the better you get. Technically you may, but something that’s perfectly played and perfectly in tune isn’t going to have the same kind of vibe as someone really going for it. In the end, perfect recordings won’t stand the test of time. Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind is a great example of that. It isn’t perfect. In fact, it’s pretty ragged. And with Le Noise and Black Dub there definitely was a vibe and we went with it. We didn’t go in there and fix every note.”

SECRET WEAPON

Getting back to the story of making Neil Young’s new album, when Young called Lanois in early 2010 with the request to help him make an acoustic album, Lanois and Howard were by this stage laying the last hands on the Black Dub album, having set up a studio installation at Lanois’ Silverlake house. It was the quality of the music and also of Vollick’s videos of the recordings, posted on the Internet, that initially attracted Young and gave him the idea to work with Lanois, and have the recordings filmed by Vollick at Silverlake.

“We looked at the acoustics of each room,” continued Howard, “at what the best combinations of acoustic guitars and microphones were, and what looked the best when we filmed there. So when Neil walked in the door, we were prepared. He played and was like: ‘Wow!’ The best thing you can do for a musician is to get them excited. As soon as you win their confidence with a great sound, and they know they don’t have to worry about anything technical, you’re going to get great performances out of them. They’re just going to nail it.”

“I set up my Radar and GP2 preamps, and we got three Neve BCM10 consoles and a Neve Melbourn desk. I ended up using the Melbourn the most. I installed the others because I initially thought we were going to need a larger rig. I started by setting up in the hallway, where I had also set up for the Black Dub project, but in the end I moved the studio three times during the time we recorded with Neil! The thing with Neil is that he only works on the three days before the full moon. He says that you’re at your most creative during this time. So if anything was going to happen, it would be during these times. In total he only came in for 11 days – four times over four months. During the breaks from recording with Neil we worked mostly on finishing the Black Dub album, apart from a break of a few weeks after Dan had his motorcycle accident [on June 5]. I moved the recording installation for each of the three days of sessions with Neil because we wanted to use the opportunities of different locations in the house, both acoustically and visually.”

Apparently it was the song Hitchhiker, which dates from 1974 and which Young finished during the recordings, that prompted the change in direction to an electric album. Young has said in an interview that it felt right to play it on an electric guitar, and this sounded so good that the song sparked a totally new approach; with Young playing one electric guitar and singing live in the studio, and Howard and Lanois continuing the dub techniques.

“The other thing that was very important for the sound of the album,” added Lanois, “was the Gretsch White Falcon that Neil played, which had two pickups: one for the bass and the other for the treble strings, each of them going through one of the two Fender Deluxe amplifiers that we’d put in the sweet spot of the room. The Falcon was our secret weapon. It was used on all the tracks, apart from Hitchhiker, where Neil played his black Les Paul, and the two acoustic songs, Love and War and Peaceful Valley Boulevard, on which he played my Guild acoustic, which has an LR Baggs magnetic pickup, so we could mic the guitar and also have an isolated source from the pickup.”

EXTRACTION & INSERTION

Mark Howard continued the narrative of Le Noise, lifting the lid on many of the recording and treatment details: “We really felt like we’d hit on a sound with Hitchhiker and then with Walk With Me. We got a killer sound on those songs. I recorded the two Fender amps with a Sennheiser 409 on each and a Shure Beta 58 for Neil’s vocals, all going through the GP2 preamps. I put a sub-harmonic on the electric guitar with the Eventide H3500 to get a big-bottomy sound. Neil lit up from that; he got so excited! I applied effects, like trails of his guitar taking off and swirling around, and dubbing his vocal by trapping it and then adding repeat delays. These effects came from the Lexicon Prime Time and the TC Electronic Fireworx. Together with the H3500 these were pretty much the only effects boxes we used on the album. There’s no reverb anywhere on it.”

ELEVEN

While this all sounds fairly straightforward, the most striking thing about Howard and Lanois’ approach was that most of these effects were while Young was playing. Plus, in addition to the Falcon, there was another secret weapon in play, something to do with that most primal of rock ‘n’ roll numbers: 11. Howard elaborates: “As Neil plugged in his guitar I dialled up these sounds to see how he would react to them. There were no overdubs, I had just three tracks: two guitar and vocals, and we added the effects, and that was it. Neil could react to what I was doing while he was playing because he was listening to my monitoring system. I always work in quadraphonic sound, and I had four 18-inch Clair Brothers PA subs going on, with a pair of Klipsch speakers in the rear and 15-inch Tannoy Golds in front. When you stood in the centre of the room it was the best sound you’ve ever heard – it was incredible. We had those speakers going full tilt, and when you put your hand on the walls they were shaking. It was almost earthquake material!

“I had Neil’s amps with me in the room, and with all this big reverberation going on, the house essentially became a giant speaker cabinet. It was jaw dropping, and Neil felt like a rock god! Dan was also in there with me, dubbing vocals and tripping them out. It was like a tag team situation, where I’d have the vocal, and he the echo, and he’d trap it and spin it. It’s the whole dub thing, and very Jamaican.

“Neil was pushing us, saying, “That’s great, just take it to the next level. Give me more of that!” So after recording, we went in there again with most songs and caught certain words and phrases and dubbed them – when you’re dubbing live, sometimes you hit it and sometimes you don’t. It was a process of extraction and insertion. Some of the songs, like Rumblin’ and Angry World, ended up being heavily processed. What you’re hearing on Sign of Love that sounds like a keyboard is the Fireworks with a setting that I created which makes the guitar sound like something completely different. But once again, there are no overdubs; all the information came from the vocal and two guitar tracks. Everything came from Neil’s performance.”

“There’s a difference between overdubbing and me doing sonics,” remarked Lanois, “though doing treatments is also a musical process, not an engineering process. In Rumblin’ I took some samples of Neil’s guitar, built those sounds, and then removed the guitar in the opening of the song. That section repeats later in the song. It’s a way of presenting the work in a different light. What tools did I use? I use a bunch of different boxes. I use an AMS Harmonizer, but any box that samples will work. They all do it in slightly different ways. Roland makes them, Korg makes them, Boomerang makes the Zoom – every box samples these days. Samplers are falling out of trees. The question is, once you have a sample, what are you going to do with it?”

BAROMETER

Le Noise contains two acoustic songs: Love and War, and Peaceful Valley Boulevard, which, explained Lanois, involved “a different set of parameters. Love and War is fairly unaffected, but Peaceful Valley Boulevard has a lot of treatments.” Howard elaborates, “I recorded the acoustic guitar with an AKG C24, which is the stereo version of the C12. The C24 is a really special microphone and I think it sounds better than the mono version. I also recorded the pickup, and added a little bit of sub on the acoustic, which is why it sounds so big and rich and full-bodied. When Neil does that little Spanish-like solo in the low strings, if you listen on big speakers it’ll shake you. I had a Sony C37a on the vocals in the acoustic songs. It’s a tube mic that not many people know about, and it’s a secret weapon because the singer can get right onto the diaphragm without it crapping out. With most tube mics, if you get close and put moisture on the capsule, they break up and start crapping out on you. But you can get onto a C37 as you can with a 58, and get the big warm print without any problems. I also used it to record Bob Dylan on Time Out Of Mind.”

With Lanois and Howard working extensively on dubbing and treating the Le Noise tracks after Young’s performances, and also working with a very limited number of tracks, there was no formal mixing stage. Howard explained that Lanois and he simply got the songs to the stage where they were happy with them. They then sequenced them, and for them that was the record. The obligatory mastering stage was therefore a bit problematic…

MASTERING DILEMMAS

“Mastering is weird for us. We deliver a record, and we like the way it sounds. So you give it to a mastering engineer and he or she automatically changes the sound, thinking they’re doing the right thing. Dan and I would go into the car with our original mixes and AB them with the mastered tracks, and we’d be like: ‘that doesn’t sound the same! We want it to sound exactly like we did it.’ Of course these days a lot of albums are made by several different producers and a mastering engineer is needed to make it sound more cohesive. But in this case it took a long time to simply get it to sound exactly the way we’d done it.”

This attention to sonic detail is an interesting admission from Howard, who admits that he’s in general not someone concerned with perfect sounds and meticulous detail. “It’s not my thing. I’m not the guy with a microscope. Everything I do is based on performance. A performance will always outweigh perfection. You can feel a performance in your heart – that’s the barometer I work off. A lot of records coming out today I have no feelings towards. There may be cool sounds, but there’s no emotion. They are machine music, robbed of humanity. I work with many great musicians, and [legendary drummer] Jim Keltner always thanks me when he works with me for letting him play a whole track. He told me that he gets hired in these days to play one bar, which gets looped, and then he’s out the door again, and his name is just used for prestige. By contrast, the musicians I play with always perform whole songs. That’s the basis for the records I make, and that’s why I hope they will stand the test of time.”

These are early days, but all the signs are that Lanois and Howard have midwifed two albums that will indeed stand the tests of time, and will eventually be regarded as classics.