Brightest Young Things

Brooklyn-based, but bringing heavy duty DC roots with it via former members of Medications and The Apes, Screens debut with Dead House, out today on What Delicate Recordings. The record is aggressive and ethereal all at the same time, much like mid-period Liars, while blending in a tribal madcap personality all of it's own. Flaunting a production where the sounds really do seem to be careening at you from multiple entry points, slicing you into twitchy little bits strewn all about the room. Just listen to "Pop Logic" go all hip hop noise rock towards the end and you can hear what AR Kane might have sounded like if they had been from DC. (For those that don't know my affinity for both of those things - DC and AR Kane - it is a compliment of the highest order.)

We had a chance to chit, as well as chat with drummer Andrew Becker about a few tracks from the new disc on release day. Here is Andy's sound + visions:

Pop Logic

Without the inimitable vision of our producer, L. Skell (of Rude Staircase infamy), “Dead House” wouldn’t even have come close to being the record that we set out to make. I really can’t say enough about his dedication, talent and instincts. When we got to the mixing phase for this song, we gave L. some very general direction… something like, “when the song reaches the one minute and fifty second mark, make it sound that one This Heat song …you know the one.”  Then we went off to our day jobs. When we came back to my apartment to listen to what he’d done on his first pass, we were totally blown away. He created this track (I’m still not sure from what) that he called the “Jackson 5”, which basically sounds like a chimey guitar or piano that sits along side the keyboard line during the verses. He also treated the drums so that they sounded big and fat on the first half, and then morphed into sort of a drum machine feel on the second half. He also took a tambourine part I recorded and warped it into some peculiar sound that was reminiscent of the beginning of a Beastie Boys song. Basically, he blew minds. (Note: the L. Skell produced “Young People’s Church of the Air” by Deleted Scenes will see light of day soon…prepare yourselves.)

Radio Tabaloapa

Dan (Tierney, keyboards) had a stockpile of solo piano tunes he had written in his bedroom and we thought it would be interesting to pepper a couple of those throughout the album; sort of breaking the work up into a couple movements. After Dan recorded the main piano part, Breck (Brunson, vocals) , Luke (Kozikowski, guitar) and I recorded some percussion parts in Nick’s (Krill, engineer) echo chamber, basically stomping our feet and hitting wooden posts and doors with 2x4s, which you hear in the middle of the song. Once we brought everything back to New York to begin mixing, L. and I were thinking it would be interesting to add some other elements to it. At this point, I had been on a 6-month Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire kick, and wanted to try and work in some found sounds or field recordings. We recorded some sounds from my radio alarm clock radio, which was ok…but not thrilling. But L. had an idea to essentially sample some sounds from my record collection and manipulate those. So we set up a mic to my turntable speakers and recorded a bunch of stuff with me speeding up and slowing down the records. Then we brought those sounds into the computer and transmogrified them using pitch shifting, reverb, etc. They were kind of thrown on top of the song semi-strategically, but it seemed to work well. When we got to the sequencing stage, I really wanted to do something like “A Raincoats Room” from the Swell Maps’ record, “Jane from Occupied Europe”, where there’s a long piano fade in from underneath the preceding track, “Blenheim Shots”. So we found this old sample we had recorded in practice many years ago and stuck that onto the end of the preceding song, “//---\\” and faded that out while “Radio Tabaloapa” faded in. This may be my favorite song on the record.

Dead Extension

This was another one of Dan’s solo pieces that we thought would make a nice interstitial piece. We set up a bunch of mics on the piano, including one in the echo chamber that adjoined the main recording room in Nick’s studio. After listening to the recording I had a specific idea for something that I thought could would be interesting from a percussion standpoint. So one day, I went out with my little digital 4-track to the blocks surrounding McCarren Park in Brooklyn (where it seems like almost every week they’re erecting a new condominium) and recorded construction sounds for about an hour. When I brought it back, L. and I chopped these sounds up into single hits and 3 to 4 second bits, which were then constructed into a sort of arrhrythmic pattern, that a friend of mine said sounded like someone washing the dishes at a diner. I’m not sure if everyone in the band was psyched about it, but I think my they let it slide because I was so enthusiastic about seeing the idea through. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea.

Better To Burn Than To Not Freeze

I think we may have played this song one time in practice before heading into the studio. It was basically a Dan demo that we tried to flesh out. We didn’t even really have an ending to it when we recorded it. Originally, there were drums throughout the entire song, which were omitted during mixing because they just sounded bad and didn’t build to anything with them in the whole time. The ending was a Luke thing. Nick had all these old, fucked up amps lying around his studio that would generate some really great, hideous, ear splitting noise. So Luke plugged into one and vigorously fiddled his guitar with a screwdriver for about 5 minutes. During mixing we took a bunch of these sounds and piled them on top of each other so that it built to this obscene, aural fuck fest. The idea was to end the album in a way that didn’t necessarily point towards one particular aesthetic (though it could be argued that it points directly toward noise), but that, instead left the future wide open, musically speaking. After spending 9 months recording and mixing this thing, it was almost like wiping the slate clean and starting fresh…something we desperately needed at that point.

You can myspace with the band, should you still swing that way.

Previously in listening party:

• 5/18: Listening Party: The Barr Brothers
• 5/7: Listening Party: We Are Serenades @ Black Cat
• 4/26: Listening Party: Avan Lava
• 4/20: Record That Changed My Life
• 4/19: Listening Party: Jill Barber
• 4/9: Listening Party: Hundred Visions
• 4/5: Listening Party: Cymbals Eat Guitars
• 4/3: Listening Party: The Tender Thrill
• 3/26: Listening Party: EXITMUSIC
• 3/23: Listening Parties: Alex Vans and The Makes tonight at The Dunes