What can you tell us about the process of making Dead Neighbors?
Sebastian: We’d been playing these songs for about a year and a half at that point. I was talking to Xander [Witt] from Muuy Biien about what we could do on a budget so he pointed me towards his friend Scott, who used to live at the [creative space] Secret Squirrel. He’s up in New York now. We just recorded the whole thing in his bedroom in the basement of the Secret Squirrel, which is beneath Ben’s Bikes. It was cool. [It was over] a period of about like a month or so?
Howard: Yeah it was like February.
Sebastian: Yeah, just over the course of that month we would just go over there on weekends, I would just drink a shit-ton of tea and either do guitar takes or vocal takes. Howard was able to get all of the drum takes out in one day. There was minimal confusion honestly. All things considered it went really smoothly considering our budget of nothing. It was really cool. So we recorded the whole thing for about a month, we sat in a listened to some mixes and I just gave him some notes on it and then we had the first copy of the album ready within a week after that. I sent it over to Terence [Chiyezhan], you know, murk daddy flex, [and] he mastered that first copy. But that mastering brought out some things I didn’t like about the album, like vocals too loud on Stereo Song or the guitar not sounding right on Ever or something like that. By that point, Scott had already moved to New York so it was emails back and fourth for about another month, giving him notes, trading music back and forth. After that was done, I brought the album over to Terence and we mastered the album in one day. We just sat in his bedroom and we mastered it using his monitors and his computer. I know enough about studio work to be dangerous enough but for the most part he was like “just close your eyes and tell me when you think there is enough reverb.” It was actually really easy and very fast. We knocked the whole thing out in about four hours. On a side note he had some of the best tea I’ve ever had.
What was it like recording in a bedroom?
Sebastian: Cozy. It was a cool bedroom so that helped psych me up for it.
Howard: It sounded pretty good. I don’t know a lot about sound but Scott told me it was a good room to record drums in, it was like L-shaped.
Sebastian: It was very asymmetrical.
Howard: So the drums sounded good. It was a very relaxed thing. I feel like in a studio there would be a lot more pressure to get stuff done as soon as possible.
Sebastian: The vibe felt good.
What would you say is the overall mood of the album, what it felt like when recording?
Sebastian: So, have you ever watched Neon Genesis Evangelion? It felt like that!
Howard: I’ve never watched that.
Sebastian: It’s an anime. But you know, it felt surreal for me. Just doing exactly what I wanted to do. Getting to play guitar really loud and sing into a microphone for money. It was cool.
Howard: The mood of the album itself, there are some more angry songs on there, but I think as we progress we get a bit more chilled out.
Alex: I’ve done my own stuff when I’ve recorded myself a long time ago, but it felt pretty natural. It was exciting to record all of the music we’ve been working on and playing at shows.
What equipment do you use that affects your sound most?
Sebastian: The combination between guitar and amplifier always has a weigh in on it. The guitar I was using was the very first electric guitar I owned. My dad got it for me for like, an eighth grade birthday present. It was a really crappy guitar, but it could still play and I think that guitar specifically had a greater effect on the way the album sounded, pedals notwithstanding
Alex: Sebastian doesn’t really use pedals all that much, and I don’t use them at all. I really just mess with equalizers a lot on the amps.
The album is a sort of mixture between shoegaze and punk. Do you identify with one more than the other?
Sebastian: I feel like I listen to more shoegaze. I started discovering punk the summer after A Lot More Less ended up disintegrating and it heavily informed me when I was writing the album. Bands like Mission of Burma and Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth isn’t necessarily punk, but they do have their punkier moments. It’s kind of hard to put Dead Neighbors in a box but I end up saying, for the sake of ease, that we split the different between Mission of Burma and My Bloody Valentine. I guess myself, I identify with the shoegazer archetype if there is one.
Howard: I’d say for drumming, I’ve always played punk rock beats on the drunk set. So I guess the default, go-to drum parts that I wrote, especially for the first songs, were a lot more punk influenced for sure.
Fall Break Records is distributing the album as cassettes. How do you feel about that particular format and are there plans to release it in others?
Sebastian: I feel like a cassette is the best way to listen to the album honestly. There is just that layer of hiss that adds something else to music. And I think specifically what we’re playing is going to sound really good on it. We don’t have any plans to release it on any other format right now. For most of our shows, what we’ve been doing right now is just burning CDRs in my room and having people pay what they want. Technically its out on CDs but only if you come to our shows. [Dead Neighbors is available on cassette and digital format here, as well as on iTunes here.]
