Down on Fascination Street | The Faint
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Tony Ware
IT'S OPENING TIME FOR NEW-WAVE STEAMPUNKS THE FAINT AS THE BAND DEBUTS A NEWLY CONSTRUCTION STUDIO, ALBUM AND LABEL
THE GEEKS WERE RIGHT
“After construction was completed [in 2007], I was happy to have the seemingly endless options, but I was especially happy to have the extended time,” Petersen says. “We started doing a lot of tracking right away, keeping it live. But then we redid a lot. When I started recording my guitar stuff for this record, my initial setup was so elaborate, with mics doing stereo, plus room mics in all sorts of configurations. And, ultimately, I would end up redoing it all — just throwing up a Royer R-121. Our initial drum tracking was ridiculous, with so many mics in the live room. And it sounded good, but it didn't necessarily serve the songs the best. Eventually, we ended up putting drums in the smaller iso room to deaden the shit out of them, and in hindsight it gave us our own sound more than the big room.”
“We've tried some different types of experiments,” Fink adds. “‘Battle Hymn for Children,’ the last song on the record, we played out live with a version more like [OutKast's] ‘Bombs Over Baghdad,’ while the record is a lighter, smoother thing. But the point is to keep trying till you find the character that fits the song.”
Out of this voltage-spiked vortex and games of stylistic hopscotch has emerged an album in which re-amped synths, sometimes stringy, sometimes spiny, growl and burble from every song. “One thing that has pretty much touched everything I've done is a Doepfer A-100 modular synth,” Petersen says. “I was a bit of a Lego kid, and part of me finds that signal paths are just interesting. It's fun to run a hi-hat through and patch stuff in and suddenly you haven't heard that sound even though it still functions as a hi-hat.”
In some songs guitars have conversations in rapid-fire Morse code, and a skewed yet musically sound solo may recall Captain Beefheart even as circuits gurgle and bend, while in other songs one synth's filter molests another's folds, tone wheels yawn, and 100 ms of delay is the only reprieve for the parched.
“Our manager said that the tom sound on ‘Get Seduced’ sounded like someone broke into Baskin-Robbins and hit the empty ice-cream containers, and we said cool,” Petersen says. “He was being a little snotty, but I took it as a compliment.”
The band's applications of Celemony Melodyne help act as a counterpoint. The varying tuning and stretching effects — fine-tuned patiently by Fink and Baechle — can be heard on vocals and bass in different songs. All elements are treated (and re-treated) equally, as Fink says he is not precious of his vocals; he strives for mood as much as meaning, using whatever tools are at hand. Themes of straightforward individuals interacting (“Psycho,” “I Treat You Wrong”) and childhood nostalgia (“Fulcrum & Lever”) balance against much more nihilistic outlooks on science versus religion (“Machine in the Ghost”), technology's possible coups against humanity and how zeros and ones will change the course of electricity (“The Geeks Were Right”), plus the pitched and smeared perspectives of wartime (“Battle Hymn for Children”).
With no songs escaping revision and some songs drastically different from their genesis, Fink credits each member of the group as equal musician and remixer. Even using the same synth, each member would approach from a different knob, and every member has a veto when it comes to arrangements. Fasciinatiion is a collection of five people's perspectives working much like their synths: amped by and run through one another. The only distinct outside role went to Ted Jensen, who did the mastering at Sterling Sound in New York. And Germany's Boys Noize, who has worked within ENAMEL, is likely to contribute remixes.
From building the studio to finishing the latest album, the whole process went a long way with an optimistic attitude. “Fasciinatiion: The title isn't a directive or command on how to feel about the record,” Fink concludes. “It's hopefully just a contagious outlook, finding the good part of what you've experienced rather than just picking apart the bad; you can feel good about noticing even little shitty stuff…so long as you're gaining a perspective you didn't previously have. I always carry around the delusion that we're on the brink of a significant change, and now we're even more suited to set up scenarios to capture that luck and arrange it.”
EXCLUSIVE FULL GEAR LIST
ENAMEL EQUIPMENT
Computer, DAW, console, hardware
Apple PowerMac G5 with OS 10.4
Alesis MasterLink Mastering CD Recorder
Crane Song HEDD 192 A/D converter
Digidesign Pro Tools|HD2 TDM 7.4.1
Trident Series 24 console
Synths, software, drum brain, amps
Ampeg SVT bass amp
ARP Solina String Ensemble
Ashdown ABM 500 EVO bass amp
Celemony Melodyne software
Dave Smith Poly Evolver
Doepfer A-100, MS-404
Fender Deluxe Reverb guitar amp
Hartmann Neuron
JoMoX JaZBase03 drum brain
Korg 770, MS-20, Poly-61
Moog Memorymoog
Native Instruments Battery soft sampler
Novation SuperNova II
Studio Electronics Omega 2
Yamaha CS-01
Preamps, EQs, compressors, effects
Analogue Solutions Phobos Filtered Coffee filter
API 3124+ preamp
(2) Avalon U5 preamp/DIs
BSS DPR-901 II EQ
(2) dbx 160A compressors
Drawmer DS201 gate
Electro-Harmonix NY2A compressor
(3) Empirical Labs Distressor EL8X
EMT 140 Plate Reverb
Eventide H8000FW effects processor
Korg SDD-2000 digital delay
Lexicon Prime Time digital delay
Line 6 PODxt Pro
Moog Moogerfooger Ring Modulator
Roland SRE-555 Chorus Echo
Sherman FilterBank
TC Electronic Reverb 4000
Universal Audio 2-610 preamp, 2-1176 compressor
Valley People 440 compressor/limiter
Mics
AKG C 451 B/ST, C 518 M, C 4500 B-BC
Audio Technica AT4033a
Beyerdynamic M500
Chameleon Labs TS-1
Earthworks QTC30
Electro-Harmonix EH-R1
Heil PR40
Neumann M 147
Royer R-121
(2)Sennheiser e609, (2) e604, (2) MD 421 II, MD 441
Shure SM7, SM57, Beta 57, Beta 52
Sony C48
Monitors, amp, monitor mixers
Bryston 4B SST power amplifier
Furman HDS-16/HRM-16 headphone monitoring system
Tannoy System 15DMT speakers
Widget Wonders
To help them spark new ideas in the studio, The Faint swears by these Mac OS X Widgets as creative ignition. Here, Joel Petersen and Jacob Thiele talk about their favorites.
iCage: The John Cage quote of the day is helpful in putting yourself into a creative mindset.
Oblique Strategies: Brian Eno's random problem-solver. Perfect for when you run into a studio snag and want an outside opinion, especially since that outside opinion is Eno's. Usually it helps get a different perspective; sometimes it's way off.
Dictionary/Thesaurus: Obviously, the dictionary can be helpful when writing lyrics. Maybe you should avoid the thesaurus, though — you don't want to end up sounding like Alanis Morissette.
BPM Tap: Useful when thinking of changing the tempo and a metronome isn't handy.
Pro Tools Tip of the Day: It's never too late to learn something new.
The Weather Forecast: It helps you realize that there is a world outside of the studio control room.
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