Song Exploder - The Microphones - I Want Wind to Blow

Episode Date: July 1, 2014

In the fall of 2001, Phil Elverum released the album The Glow Pt 2 on K Records. Pitchfork named it the best album of the year. In this episode, Phil recounts how he created the first song on the record at Dub Narcotic Studio. He spoke with me from his home in Anacortes, Washington, about his love of being alone in the studio, evoking nature through music, and where the name The Microphones came from. Plus a few words from Calvin Johnson, the founder of K Records. This episode is presented in conjunction with The Creators Project.   

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi K. Hirway. This episode contains explicit language. In the fall of 2001, Phil Elvin released the album, The Glow Part 2 on K Records, pitchfork named it the best album of the year. In this episode, Phil recounts how he created the first song on the record at Dubbed Narcotics Studio. He spoke with me from his home in Anacortes, Washington, about his love of being alone in the studio, evoking nature three. music and where the name the microphones comes from. Plus, we'll hear from Calvin Johnson, founder of the legendary record label of K Records. My name's Phil Elvrom, and I made a bunch of

records under the name The Microphones, and now I make records under the name Mount Erie. This song is called I Want When to Blow, and it's the first song on my record, The Glow Part 2, which came out in 2001. I recorded it in Dubnarcotics Studio in Olympia, Washington, on January 1st, 2001. I just noticed that when I dug out the track sheet. I just recorded all the time. That was my life back then. I lived a block from the studio, and I had a key,

so I would just kind of be in there whenever it was available. So Dub Narcotics Studio is sort of the in-house studio of K Records in Olympia, and I moved to Olympia ostensibly for college, but I only lasted two quarters there because I just got so involved in all the other cool music and punk stuff that was going on downtown. Calvin Johnson invited me to work in the studio and gave me a key for some reason. I still don't know why.

But I had access to this amazing studio and I would just be in there at all hours doing experiments. I was obsessed. I mean, it was great. If he didn't know what he was doing, he was figuring it out. That's kind of how I continue to work to this day is just, you know, making mistakes

and discovering crazy accidents. I remember writing this song in Philadelphia mid-tour in my friend Mira's parents upstairs bedroom. I just have a distinct memory of waking up, noodling around in the morning and coming up with the melody of like, dwang, dwang, dwang, dwang. It just happened. Sometimes it just comes out. This song is kind of an exception because customarily I don't have a song when I start recording.

You know, it's based on experimentation in the studio. And I probably had played a version of it a few times on that tour. So I came home with this pre-formed thing. When I recorded it, I decided to break it down into just the low Gs on one track, and then the higher melody on another track. So I was kind of figuring out it would sound unnatural in a way, but interesting. So that's kind of what I was doing with this guitar part. I've always been really into utilizing the stereo spectrum.

Music comes out in stereo. People listen to music in stereo. There's a lot of opportunity. to play with special stuff and two speakers. There's two speakers everywhere. It's amazing. I used to have a musical group with a girlfriend called The Thunder Clouds. It was like a Beach Boys cover band,

and we would just figure out Beach Boys songs, break them into two-part harmonies. And, you know, we played a couple of shows around Olympia. It was very fun. So the first words in the song are The Thunder Clouds broke up, which is about us. breaking up as a couple and also about changing weather. You know, it's multiple levels of meaning about weather being a metaphor for my emotions. That was kind of what all my songs were about back

then and arguably still are. The thunder cloud woke up. The trite up, the lightning led up, The clacking shutters just shut up. And then there's three other vocal tracks which only come in on these like few words that make this kind of elongated chord. Yeah, I've always recorded analog and I still do. So in preparation for this interview, I had planned to go down to Dub Narcotic and make digital backups of the reels, which I have never done. They're still just sitting there.

But because they're 12, 13 plus years old, the reels of tape are deteriorating. There's a thing that happens with certain tapes of a certain generation, I guess, where the adhesive starts to break down, and when you rewind it or fast-forward it or play it on a tape machine, it doesn't play properly. But there's a workaround where if you bake them at a low temperature for like two days, then you get one or two more passes out of them on the machine.

So we were able to salvage the tracks for this interview. I'm playing all the instruments here. I guess I prefer it that way. I get kind of crazy when I'm deep in a recording project where I'm not really communicating in words or anything. I know I'm so immersed in this sound idea that if I had to talk about it to someone else or tell them what I'm trying to do,

that it would throw me off, I think. Which leads to a lot of logistical complications running back and forth to hit the record button. and this sound you can hear is me walking getting the headphones on and walking back after I finish the piano the alternative is me going back and erasing all of the sounds of me walking over to the piano walking back to press stop I like the sound of human life going on in between the quiet parts between performances you know there's just two piano tracks but I put the mic like 50 feet away and just like slammed the notes down,

let them resonate in the room, so they feel huge. The song is about tumultuous feelings. This song sort of builds and morphs into this explosion. And I feel like that's maybe where the power of this song comes from is this tension that is building for the whole thing. There's this like pulse, and finally there's this release. I had this hollow body electric guitar, this K guitar. I was aiming for basically the sound of water.

You can hear the pick sound almost. I miced the strings as well as an amp. Two different delay rates on the right side and the left side to sort of create this disorienting, watery, waves hitting each other effect. There's no ship on my sea. It's the last line I sing, and so I go out to see. with the instruments. This recording is me alone in the studio

scraping the bottom of a snare drum. I heard that sound first in my head and I was like, I need this weird kind of scrape without thinking about snare or thinking about whatever it was that could make it. And then I'll look around the studio, where can I find those sounds in this room? I was going for this thing, for this song

of new characters appearing all the time and then vanishing. I wanted there to be people poking their heads, not people, instruments, poking their heads in the door. I remember discovering that I loved recording, that breakthrough when I was in high school, getting to record for the first time. We had a simple eight-track studio set up in the record store where I worked and just staying after work and experimenting, realizing what was possible with recording, and also realizing that so much of orthodoxy,

recording ideology is about capturing a thing perfectly. And I just was never interested by that because it seems like all of the other ways around that perfect sound are much more, you know, there's a vast world of possibilities. So I guess I maybe developed a tendency to work in the opposite direction of trying to do it the right way. In fact, every time I've ever recorded a drum set, I've probably put the mics in a different place. just because they're going to sound enough like drums, and why not have them sound characteristic and new, if possible? That's why my project was called the microphones at first,

was because it wasn't even songs, really. It was just sound and recording. And the early songs were literally about recording, about gear, sort of in a metaphorical way, like my heart is the pre-amp or whatever. You know, I was in high school, so lay off, man. I loved recording, and that was how I got into doing this, not because I wanted to write songs. Of course, I've developed a love for writing songs since then, but yeah, it was that breakthrough of self-recording, which changed everything for me. And now here's I Want Wind to Blow by the microphones in its entirety.

No change in the light Corraceant lights There's sacrifice There's hard feelings There's points set free There's no breeze There's no ship on my sea At songexploder.net

To see Phil Elverm's original recording chart From January 1st, 2001 You'll also find links to buy this song And to learn more about the microphones, Mount Erie, and Dub Narcotics Studio. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length,

and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby,

Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band.

The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at SongExploder.net. or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.