EQ Magazine - September 2008 - (Page 16) ¡NATURALISMO B ! BOHEMIO! Devendra Banhart (left) and Noah Georgeson (right) working on a Rhodes arrangement for Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon. In the Studio with the Kings and By Will Romano Queens of Freak Folk Drawing on such wide influences as The Incredible String Band, Brazilian Tropicália, and obscure 1970s horror soundtracks, artists working in the fabled “freak folk” movement—an avant-garde strain of indie rock built upon the foundation of psychedelic folk—create music that is at once traditional and groundbreaking. It’s a fascinating subgenre populated by some of the most creative musical minds of the modern day—one in which lo-fi recording techniques clash with academic musical aesthetics to create a sonic style that is characterized by equal parts Byzantine experimentalism and roots orthodoxy. Jumping into the studio with the wunderkinds of the freak folk world—Devendra Banhart, Grizzly Bear, Midlake, A Fine Frenzy, and The Valerie Project—we offer a unique view into the diverse recording practices and philosophies of the new guard of Bohemian music. SMOKEY SIGNALS With a catalog of critically-celebrated releases spanning reverb-soaked folk recorded on a four-track to Kinetoscopic psychedelia, singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart is one of the leading lights of the freak folk movement. Surprisingly coherent given the schizophrenic mishmash of musical elements contained therein, Banhart’s latest offering, Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon [XL Recordings], finds the artist experimenting with analog tape to create soundscapes that are both rich and lo-fi. “We tracked nearly everything to tape using an old one-inch Scully 8-track at slow speeds,” says producer/bandora player Noah Georgeson, who engineered the record with Beau Raymond, Maggie O’Brien, and Alex Pavlides at Banhart’s Topanga Canyon home studio. “We were running at 15 ips a fair amount of the time, but we were also running 7-1/2 ips, which the machine was not completely prepared to handle. The strange warble effect you hear in certain places is due to us running at 7-1/2 ips.” Georgeson says that the team mixed Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon in Pro Tools, but often transferred 16 EQ SEPTEMBER 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - September 2008 EQ Magazine - September 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Freak Folk Todd Rundgren Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Sony Acid 6 Ableton Live 7 Portable Recorder Showdown Gadgets and Goodies Sounds Room with a Vu EQ Magazine - September 2008 EQ Magazine - September 2008 - EQ Magazine - September 2008 (Page Cover1) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - EQ Magazine - September 2008 (Page Cover2) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - EQ Magazine - September 2008 (Page 1) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Contents (Page 2) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Contents (Page 3) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Talk Box (Page 4) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Talk Box (Page Blowin1) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Talk Box (Page Blowin2) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Talk Box (Page 5) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounding Board (Page 6) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounding Board (Page 7) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 8) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 9) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 10) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 11) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 12) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 13) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 14) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Punch In (Page 15) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 16) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 17) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 18) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 19) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 20) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Freak Folk (Page 21) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 22) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 23) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 24) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 25) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 26) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 27) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 28) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Todd Rundgren (Page 29) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Guitar Trax (Page 30) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Guitar Trax (Page 31) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Bass Management (Page 32) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Bass Management (Page 33) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Key Issues (Page 34) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Key Issues (Page 35) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 36) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Drum Heads (Page 37) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 38) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Vocal Cords (Page 39) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 40) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 41) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 42) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Mix Bus (Page 43) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Cheat Sheet (Page 44) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Cheat Sheet (Page 45) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sony Acid 6 (Page 46) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sony Acid 6 (Page 47) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Ableton Live 7 (Page 48) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Ableton Live 7 (Page 49) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 50) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 51) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 52) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 53) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 54) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 55) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 56) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 57) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 58) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 59) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 60) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Portable Recorder Showdown (Page 61) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Gadgets and Goodies (Page 62) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Gadgets and Goodies (Page 63) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 64) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 65) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 66) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 67) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 68) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 69) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 70) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Sounds (Page 71) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page 72) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page Cover3) EQ Magazine - September 2008 - Room with a Vu (Page Cover4)
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.