I’m feeling a little nostalgic. This was written on 2/19/03
Just over six hours later, after two speeding tickets, a despicable fast food dinner, and a cute female border patrol guard, you are in Canada. From here it’s a straight drive into Montreal, on a dark and lonesome road with no lamps street-side to guide you. You’re already late for rehearsals. In the next seventy-two hours you must teach four songs to three musicians and record them to tape. Oh yeah, and you haven’t really written any lyrics yet.
Forty-eight hours later, the first thing you notice is the stench of stale coffee. It hits you when you open the door the same as sure as hot air when you walk into a sauna. It’s the smell of habitual late nights slaving over a hard disk or analog tape recorder. The space is momentarily dark with slivers of early morning light dancing across the floor in the distance, from a window in an adjacent room. You find a light switch on the wall to the right of the entrance, but the bulbs don’t offer much assistance. There’s awful industrial carpeting covering the floors. To your right is a makeshift kitchen. An antique table supports the coffee maker, several mugs and glasses from non-matching sets, and a toaster oven. There’s a mini-fridge under the table. It’s stocked with only a half-gallon of milk. There are two small, couch-like chairs on opposite walls of the alcove, positioned so that they’re facing each other. Fifteen hours from now, you’ll be trying to sleep here, exhausted and dehydrated. A narrow hallway runs the length of the room and eventually opens into a larger space. There’s an entranceway to your immediate left and another one further down the foyer.
Turn left. Upon entering the first room you’re instantly thrown back to movies like “War Games” or “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Various microphone pre-amps and consoles blink, and with all the glowing red specks of light you’d think you were counting stars. When you find the light switch in this room, you’re startled by the murky red glow that is cast down from above. What it reveals is like a dream: to your left is floor-to-ceiling studio monitors of varying sizes. The first thing you wonder is, “How loud would this get with everything cranked to ten?”†The space in front of the monitors is consumed by a Ward Beck 26 Channel Broadcasting Mixer. You start to think about the songs, the band, and how you can fill 26 channels with sound. Then there’s the wall of outboard effects and tape recorders in front of you. A Studer A-80 two-inch tape recorder, several half-inch tape decks and rack-mounted effects ranging from space echoes, spring reverbs and tape echoes to compressors and equalizers. Once you remember to breathe, you close your eyes and try to count the ways in which this differs from recording songs your basement with a My First Sony and RadioShack microphones. You open your eyes and it’s still there. The digital LCD screens blinking on and off, the little blips and bleeps, bathed in red, all still there.
Walking forward inside the control room you find a small office with two computers and a table. There is paperwork everywhere, and a shelf unit above one of the computer desks houses software for just about every sound recording program known to man and books on technique. The door to this room exposes the foyer where you entered and the makeshift kitchen. The faint odor of coffee is still recognizable. Directly ahead of you is a large plate glass window. Behind the window lays the room where you’ll soon spend countless hours: the live room. Above you, wires of varying colors crisscross clinging to the ceiling. Whether they start in the live room and end in the control room, or vice versa, you don’t have the slightest clue. There is a couch where someone can sit and look-in on the live room. You open the wooden door to the room and step inside.
It’s colder in here. The floor is woode. The walls are all brick, seventy-five percent is covered in soundproofing. The light switch in this room provides you with the opportunity for either standard yellow/white or green light. The four corners of the live room are angled to provide better acoustics. There’s an oriental rug laid out in front of the far wall upon which sits a 1965 Westbury 3-piece drum kit. Big hulking amplifiers are strewn across the room. Hiwatt, Traynor, Ampeg, Mesa Boogie. Again you stop and wonder what it would sound like with everything cranked to ten. There’s a beautiful antique Hammond organ–no wait, two Hammond organs. Numerous guitars and basses of varying models line the walls. Electric and acoustic. Hollow body and semi-hollow body. Fender and Gibson. Right-handed, left-handed, and right-handed strung left-handed. You think about the next twenty-four hours, and the limitless possibilities this room alone provides.
A man has stepped into the room behind you without your noticing. He’s close to your height with curly blonde hair. He’s wearing thick black-rimmed glasses, an old ripped tee shirt and jeans. He’s wearing pink slippers. He stands smiling and reaches out his hand to shake yours. This is Jace, the studio engineer. For the next two days, you and Jace are going to be working together. This is what you’ve been waiting for.
—-
Take a walk from live room to control room.
I soon found out Jace Lasek, who owns Breakglass Studios in Montreal, had a band. He was, at first, almost ashamed to mention it. When asked what they were called, he said, “TheBesnardLakes” and you could see him cringing, his insides turning. The subject of his music wasn’t brought up again…
Last I saw Jace, he was opening for The Unicorns at Bowery Ballroom. The band sounded much different in a live setting than they do on record. His guitar work is a bit chaotic and louder. Some songs were unrecognizable. Jace too, was unrecognizable. I remember him sliding along the floor in those slippers, and here he was in tea shades, wearing all black and looking like yourprototypical “frontman.” I thought he might break the tremolo on his guitar he was jerking at it like a madman. It sounded wild.
I know Wolf Parade is over-hyped and kinda sucks, but if you can spare a few dolalrs, please go catch TheBesnardLakes open up for them on their current US Tour. One of the best (and yet, least known) of the Montreal experimental bands, TheBesnardLakes is a stunning experimental rock band. Their website allows you to stream the entire first album. You’d do right to take a listen:
TheBesnardLakes – This Thing
TheBesnardLakes – For Spy Turned Musician
TheBesnardLakes – Thomasina
TheBesnardLakes – Life Rarely Begins With Tungsten Film #1
