AJT: In the information about Discount Mirrors you mention how you took aspects of other studios you enjoy working at and incorporated them here, could you talk me through some of those studios?
JD: I would always prefer to stay and sleep at the studio we’re recording at, even a couch or something. That started at The Hangar in Sacramento with Chris Woodhouse. That place had apartments and a kitchen and I really liked that aspect of being fully-invested with zero distraction. Plus, it was a warehouse district, so there was like a barbecue joint down the road and a couple of bars, but not a lot of shit to do. We recorded at the second Hangar spot in Sacramento, which was lesser so, but it still had a place you could stay. I basically bought a coffee machine and a toaster oven so I could make breakfast, but very minimal. Then we started recording at Sonic Ranch, Texas, and they have several studios on this big 2- or 3,000 acre pecan farm. There’s a studio there called the Adobe we basically modelled our spatial planning in the live room and mix room on, because I was really fond of it having a large mix room.

I feel like sometimes… Bauer really talked me into this more than anything, but it’s true that sometimes when you’re recording in a studio, the live room is big enough for the band but then you get into the mix room and there’s not enough room for everyone to hang out comfortably and not be bothering the engineer or the person doing the mixing. So this one is large, with big couches far back from the desk so you’re not ass to elbows. We definitely modelled it on that. The Adobe was very woody, a lot of wooden diffusers, low lighting, colourful and simple. Lots of fantastic equipment which, between Bauer and me, the amount of gear we have is absurd. It’s actually, like, hinging on an addiction. Once I saw everything on a list… somehow when it’s all piled up you have a hard time envisioning what exactly it is in front of you, but when you see it on a list, you’re like, “Jesus Christ, what is wrong with us?” [laughs] So the point is to use it, have other people use it and make use of this vintage stuff they don’t make anymore. You can get any sound here, and that’s very similar to those other spaces I was talking about. They were just loaded up with shit.

AJT: Can you ever have too much choice?
JD: For sure. I have a lot of synthesisers and I have a rule where I have to turn them on and use them once a year, otherwise I sell them. I definitely have some I need to sell right now that I don’t use, but I have a few pieces that are sort of museum pieces. They’re very complicated or strange – very specific. The other thing about synthesisers in particular is they’re always going up in value, so it’s a weird investment if you can take care of the gear. I would say 95 percent of it is up to snuff and working, but there’s always something breaking down. Even Pro Tools… It’s funny, I’ll switch over from the tape machine to Pro Tools and then inevitably I’ll see Eric like, “Fuck!” There’s always something breaking when you have that much stuff working at once.

AJT: Yeah, you’re constantly putting out fires. And with your new Posh Swat record [a new percussion-based improvisation record created with Ryan Sawyer and Andres Renteria] you used homemade instruments.
JD: Yeah. That was recorded at my house, the same place I recorded A Foul Form for Osees. The inspiration was a couple of different things. There’s this record by a German band from the 70s called Niagara who were an all-drum ensemble. It’s recorded really well, as the Germans in the 70s liked to do, and it’s an awesome beat-oriented record, like boogie-woogie but without a ton of stringed instruments or anything. I think one record has bass on it, maybe, but it’s very simple, funky and well done.

Then there’s a Canadian band called Syrinx who did a lot of PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] music, soundtracks for television in particular and educational stuff for kids. They’re really strange, man. I think Revenge Records reissued a box set, which is really fantastic, but it’s just a modular synthesiser, saxophone, and hand drums. It’s really excellent far-out music. I wanted to do something like that but I don’t have modular synthesisers so much. I wanted to keep it all percussion, hammer percussion and electronic drums, so we brought in Ryan Sawyer, a jazz drummer from New York, and this kid Andres Renteria from LA, who’s a trained hand drummer – he’s incredible! He brings boxes of shit with him, like some bells from Cuba and shit like that. Then I built basically a giant set of chimes that had piezo microphones on them running through amplifiers, and then triggers coming off Ryan’s drums going into that stuff. I also rented a marimba and I built this weird thing that only got used a little bit on the record but I’ll give myself points for being ambitious. It was like a tree, almost like a crucifix of wood with these bowls hanging down. They went from small to large at the bottom, tilted, and you would pour water in them. The fact they were hanging, you could hit them with mallets and every one of them had a microphone. It was just really weird [laughs].

I also used this thing I’ve used on Damaged Bug records [another of Dwyer’s musical projects] before called the acid piano, it’s this big apparatus I built in my house using power tools while on LSD. I remember my ex-girlfriend was like, “Are you building that on acid? Is everything okay?” And I was like, “Yeah! I got it.” I was in the zone. But it’s just piano strings stretched over this big bowed instrument that has pickups on it, and you can hammer those as well. Then of course just lots of electronic drums. There’s a lot of old school stuff I have, but also really cheap, new shit they’re making that emulates these cool old Simmons machines. Basically the trigger was Ryan’s drum kit going into most of my stuff. It’s hard to describe exactly what came out of it, but there was a lot of interesting and fun little things. It’s definitely a weird record. I encourage everybody to check it out who’s into my stuff, but at the same time, it’s not… It’s hooky but in a weird way. It’s a strange record. It was really fun to make, certainly the sounds. I sent it to a buddy of mine last night and he was like, “I don’t even know what this is. What is this?” And I was like, “That’s kind of the point, to not know what you’re listening to.”

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