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Last week, we premiered a beautiful new song from Mariage Blanc. In case you missed it, stream “Silent Nations” and see why we’re excited about their new album No Autobiography, out next week. Today, we get to take you behind the scenes a bit. The band was nice enough to give us some insight into a few of the new songs and the recording process. Check out Mariage Blanc’s Studio Diary below!
Blue Eyes: Of all the songs on the record, “Blue Eyes” has the oldest bones. The original progression and melodic idea was something that the band had worked on in November of 2010. At that time, the song was significantly more aggressive and for some reason or another it was scrapped when we began working on material for Undercurrents. I believe it was Dotson who actually suggested revisiting the tune. Matt and I had sat down and rearranged the basics of the song for acoustic guitar – but I believe I was actually in NYC when Matt came up with the chorus. When I got back and heard his demo with those chorus harmonies, I knew we had a winner. Once I heard Dotson’s final bassline for the song, it seemed clear why he wanted to revisit it. -Josh Kretzmer
Nowhere Town: While No Autobiography is generally a fairly stripped down record, we did find a few spots to squeeze in a bit of synthesizer. During the band’s early years we didn’t have much interest in synthesizers and I would even stretch to say that we actively didn’t want them incorporated into our music at all. It’s only been within the last 3 or 4 years that we’ve slowly started realizing their vast potential when it comes to creating sonic landscapes. Coming to the realization that they can be used in beautiful, understated ways (as well as super aggressive ways) was a big step in evolution for us. Our music generally isn’t covered in synths anyway, but we now don’t shy away from using them when we think we can get something good out of them.
On this record, we ended up using them on a few different tunes. The nice gooey string sound that you can hear throughout the second verse and outro of “Silent Nations” is a vintage ARP Solina String Ensemble, a fantastic string machine from the mid ‘70s that we’ve found ourselves using fairly often since we acquired it. The other synth that makes a number of appearances on the album is a Korg MS-20 mini, an analog reissue of the classic late ‘70s synth. On “Nowhere Town” we ran it through an MXR carbon copy delay and just went to town, creating most of strange sound pads that loom over the track beginning in the second verse and that remain through the rest of the song. The MS-20 can also be heard on the outro of “Shapeshifter.” When Josh’s lead riff comes in at the end we also bring in the white noise generator on the MS-20 while we slowly sweep the synth’s filter. We then added another track; a kind of robotic sounding square wave pattern that we thought gave the ending some character. -Matt Ceraso
Bloodlines: “Bloodlines” was probably the easiest song to put together on the album – it just sort of came to us fully formed (I remember writing the choruses of both “Bloodlines” and “Silent Nations” the same day in Matt’s living room, actually). This is also one of the few songs on the album that we went back for additional work on, after sorting out the live arrangement. The final bass-line and lead guitar in the 2nd verse are both 11th hour additions to the song. Like most songs on the record, we had put together a fairly complete demo before we started the actual album sessions. Unlike most songs on the record, we grew so attached to the demo – that when we went to lay down new guitar parts on top of the real drums, we weren’t happy. We actually ended up using around 50% of the demo tracks in the final mix. -Josh Kretzmer
Mixing: We had the mixes mostly headed in the right direction by June, but I (as always) was nervous about finishing them up. We are extremely lucky to have the space that we do, but it is simply not in the same league acoustically as a proper sounding studio space. As if by fate, I bumped into Dave Cerminara one night and asked if he would come down to the studio and give our rough mixes a listen. He stopped down a few nights later, and while he thought they sounded great as they were, he also understood where we were coming from. We came up with the plan to take our mixes to Treelady and do final tweaks there. I was getting ready to move at the end of July and the studio was booked for some other projects – so we ended up finishing the record on my 30th birthday. I’ve never been terrible mindful of my own birthdays. This time around though, I don’t think I could help but take stock of things. I was closing the chapter on my 20s, finishing up this album, and getting ready to move to San Francisco. Frankly, it was all a bit overwhelming. Thankfully there was plenty of work on-hand to distract from the nostalgia. -Josh Kretzmer
Rich Kawood: Our former drummer left the band to join the marines in the Spring of 2012, so all of the writing for the songs that ended up on No Autobiography were written and arranged using drum programming to start with. Once we felt like we were ready to start tracking, the plan was to just find a session drummer to record the album with us. We ultimately decided to ask Rich Kawood (otherwise known as “Woody”) if he had any interest in helping us out. We had known him peripherally for years from playing in other bands and from just generally being around in the Pittsburgh music scene. Pittsburgh is not a large city so it’s not an uncommon thing for most of the musicians to know each other, or at least be aware of one and other. We were pleased to find out that he was interested in making the record with us and we started tracking almost immediately afterwards.
The process began with Woody listening to the demos we had done and the basic drum programming ideas that we had for each one. We were floored at how quickly he learned the structure and feel of each song, and before we knew it we were already into proper tracking. I remember listening back to some of the early takes with Josh and Woody and just realizing what an exceptional player he is and how he was just totally locked in to the tunes – I know that Josh realized it too. Recording drums can sometimes be an arduous process, but Woody made it extraordinarily easy on us. Once we started getting to know him better we also realized how good of a fit he was for our band on a personal level as well as a musical one, and it wasn’t long before we asked him to officially join us to which he enthusiastically agreed. -Matt Ceraso
Silent Nations: Something that sticks out in my mind as being a big moment for one of the tunes is when we decided to make an addition to the chorus of “Silent Nations.” We were working on it one night and Josh and I had finished tracking the guitars. Everything sounded nice, but for some reason something wasn’t quite sitting right with us on the choruses and we couldn’t really put our finger on it. The best way to describe it would be that it wasn’t feeling as melancholy as we would have liked. We tried a few things that night to no avail, and decided to bag it for the evening and go out for a few drinks. Sitting at the bar, we continued to speculate as to why the chorus wasn’t resonating with us as much as we wanted it to. Josh brought up the idea of overdubbing a second electric line on top of the current one to create a more melancholy counter-melody which I thought was not only a great idea but it was also something that had worked for us in the past.
The next night we were back at the studio and looping the choruses. I was noodling around on my Jazzmaster and sort of hinting at a certain riff when Josh excitedly said the he heard something in there. He got his guitar and we almost instantly had a great second electric line that totally changed the feel of the chorus. It now felt lush and sad, and the two interlocking parts created some really nice polyrhythms that we loved. It was the missing piece that the song needed and a reminder of how sometimes one part can turn a song upside down and totally change it. -Matt Ceraso
Mariage Blanc – “Blue Eyes”
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