Countdown to AES with Dave Fridmann
CASSADAGA, NY: In preparing for our upcoming AES presentation “The Studio As an Instrument”, we’ve made sure to ask each of our panelists about the records and producers that most influenced them.
When I posed this question to Peter Katis after our interview with him last week, among his answers he quickly mentioned fellow panelist Dave Fridmann, the iconoclast producer who has created startling and uncompromising sounds for The Flaming Lips, Elf Power, Mercury Rev, Sparklehorse, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai, and Weezer’s Pinkerton.
Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios, Cassadaga, NY. Photo by Justin Goetz.
“I remember hearing one of those Flaming Lips records in the early nineties and marveling at how blown-out a lot of those sounds were,” said Katis. “At the time, I was working at some “proper” studios, and they would have thought I was a crazy person if I tried anything like that. But hearing those Dave Fridmann records made me realize ‘Wow! You are allowed to do that.’”
Like Katis (and myself) a large part of Fridmann’s early education came from New York’s State University system, a public institution that’s become known for churning out unconventional and forward-thinking musicians.
Although he never graduated from SUNY Fredonia (“I guess I was too busy making records,” he says) Fridmann launched his career there. In 1990, he and a then-floundering indie band called The Flaming Lips even rented the music department’s studios for an entire summer to record In A Priest Driven Ambulance. It would be the band’s first critically acclaimed album – and the one that would earn them a contract with Warner Bros.
Fridmann, who is plain-spoken, professional, and unexpectedly reserved for a man best-known for radical sonic treatments, becomes momentarily excited when I ask him about this experience: “It was great,” he beams. “It definitely turned out better than their past records.” It was his second credit as an engineer, but Fridmann already showed remarkable confidence.
In addition to his fearlessness in chasing after unprecedented sounds, Fridmann remembers that he also had the courage to ask the band for a credit as co-producer. “Having done basically nothing that was commercially available at the time, I think [asking for that credit] may have been the most audacious thing I did on the record. I was too stupid to even know what I was asking, but I guess that worked out for me. It often seems to.”
This collaboration would begin a long-standing relationship with The Flaming Lips. He would go on to work on each of the band’s albums (with the sole exception of Transmissions from the Satellite Heart), breaking ground with two of the most unforgettable productions of the past 15 years (1999’s The Soft Bulletin and 2002’s Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots), and ultimately winning a Grammy for At War With The Mystics in 2006.
Critially acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 90s, "The Soft Buletin" was the Flaming Lips 9th record and a psychedelic-pop breakthrough.
When we finally got the chance to ask Fridmann what the phrase “The Studio As an Instrument” meant to him, he simply replied: “Well, what else would it be?” But despite his reputation as a trailblazer, Fridmann maintains that what he does in the studio is at least in part, reactive.
“It’s really a direct result of the bands that I work with. I’m sometimes credited-slash-blamed for changing bands’ sounds or wrecking people’s records and stuff like that, but that’s all absolute hooey.”
“I don’t do anything the bands don’t want or haven’t specifically asked me to do. The thing with the Flaming Lips or Mercury Rev is that the guys in those bands always wanted to do something crazy, interesting, or bizarre. They just had trouble finding someone who would do that for them – finding someone who would help them push the envelope of what the technology could do. I was willing, able and wanting to find those new sonic territories with them. So really, those sounds are about them, not me.”
In a 2009 interview, Wayne Coyne would remember the kind of patience that enabled Fridmann to create previously unheard textures, recalling more than two weeks spent in the studio on their first song together. Members of Weezer would similarly take advantage of Fridmann’s willingness to work obsessively toward aesthetic goals in the making of Pinkerton, the raw and impolite follow up to their smash-hit Blue Album (recorded and mixed by fellow AES Platinum Panelist Chris Shaw). Fridmann remembers full days’ worth of takes scrapped, re-arranged, and re-imagined.
But not every sound Fridmann presents is labored-over, blown-out or intentionally mangled. Even his most raucous productions often feature lush and expansive swathes of sound, and spare, elegant moments.
“With the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, every time we get together they ask for something ridiculous that I’ve never conceived of and have no idea how to get,” Fridmann says.
“But then again, a lot of bands come to me because of my work with those groups. They might say ’I really love those records’ but once we start working together they’ll say ‘well I don’t want it to sound that crazy’. There are bands who are used to saying ‘I want it to sound crazy’ to a normal producer or engineer and getting a particular result. Of course, when they say that to me, they might get something completely ridiculous, that needs to be pulled back just a little bit. (Laughs)”
Fridmann produced MGMT's major label debut "Oracular Spectacular"
Whoever the client is, Fridmann still works a short ride from the campus where he began his career. And although he’s since built his own residential studio, Tarbox Road Studios, he’s now an adjunct professor at SUNY Fredonia.
“I went to college here, and I still love it here,” he says. “It’s a great place to raise a family, it’s removed from the ridiculous hubbub of the city, and we don’t have the crazy overhead of the Nashville, LA, or New York.”
As much high profile success as he’s had, Fridmann is just as proud of his independent clients, and the low cost of keeping his studio upstate allows him to stay active in that market as well.
“I think a couple things have been proven in the marketplace at this point, especially the long tail idea in terms of sales,” he says.
“The big records companies will always be there. But corporate entities have quarterly reports – They need massive sales in two weeks, or, nothing. That’s just how they operate. But, there’s been this incredible opportunity recently for independent artists, and that is still going on, I think. There are more and more small labels every year that are able to make profits and able to be successful, promoting artists who are able to sell 20,000-50,000 records, and making great music.
“There are enough niche markets at this point that you can do whatever you want to do. I think most artists will be best-served making whatever music the feel like making. I think a lot of artists feel constrained by outside forces, and by inside forces.
They tell themselves they don’t want to screw it up, they don’t want to blow their ‘big chance’; But they’re doing themselves, and everybody involved, a disservice when they hold back and try to do something that is more reserved and doesn’t express what they want to express sonically or musically, in an attempt to mold themselves into something that is more marketable.
“I think that’s a giant waste of time. I think the Beatles proved it, I think Beck proved it, I think Alanis Morissette proved it, and I think a lot of people are continuing to prove it today: it’s just a waste of time.”
Join us at the 131st AES convention as we ask Fridmann about some of most iconic sounds, his workflow, and his thoughts on the evolution of the industry. The AES Platinum Engineers panel will take place Saturday, October 22 from 11AM – 1PM, at the Javits Center.
Justin Colletti is a Brooklyn-based producer/engineer who works with uncommon artists, and a journalist who writes about music and how we make it. Visit him at http://www.justincolletti.com.
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