When Toronto’s celebrated electropunk
duo MSTRKRFT planned the
follow-up to their 2006 smash debut,
The Looks, the team of Jesse F. Keeler
and Alex Puodziukas (a.k.a. Al-P) let it
all hang out. Daft Punk and Justice be
damned, MSTRKRFT embraced their
inner “Tom Sawyer.”
“We wanted to let all our varied,
non-dance influences get involved,”
Keeler says from Toronto. “We were
listening to Steely Dan’s Aja, George
Benson’s Give Me the Night, weird
Japanese records. We thought about
metal riffs. We even joked that we
wanted to make a dance song that
sounded like Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer.’ So
the prog-rock influence is no mistake.
We tried to not let our DJ ideas hold
back our musical ideas, and actually
make songs.”
With that in mind and due to the
fact that both Keeler and Puodziukas
are drummers, the duo approached
beats in a non-dance way, too. “We
did drum programming in a way that
is similar to how you would actually
play the drums,” Keeler says. “If you
only have two hands and two feet, you
can’t hit all the drums at the same
time. We cut around and made sure it
was all real sounding. We emulated
how things would be off the
computer, in the computer.”
The fruits of MSTRKRFT’s labor are
evident in the first track from Fist of
God [Dim Mak/Downtown]. Whirring,
eardrum-ripping synths and a vicious
four-to-the-floor groove introduce “It
Ain’t Love,” but after an all-too brief
verse (sung by Lil’ Mo), prog-rock lightning
bolts upend the house-oriented
arrangement like Anthrax jamming with
Rush at Budokan. After the big prog
moment, the dance groove re-enters,
now approximating a gargantuan Run-
DMC beat while layered synths morph
and mushroom above. The song’s only
constant is its ever-changing drum pattern,
whirring synths, and prog rock
assault. How MSTRKRFT created the
track’s vertigo-inducing rhythm is a
study in devolution.
“We work with a lot of samples,”
Keeler explains, “and for the most part
on the grid in Pro Tools, moving
actual audio around to make our drum
patterns. We’ll program the pattern
and run that out to an Akai Z4 sampler,
then load up ten or 12 samples
that we think might work and scroll
through them. Once we make a decision,
we lock it down and print it.”
But even prior to the usual sample
select/scroll/print process, MSTRKRFT
considers the human element. The
prog-rock thrills of “It Ain’t Love”
were derived from one of Puodziukas’
former loves.
“I was just playing that pattern on
my thighs; it originally came from my
old punk band, Spiral Hill,” Puodziukas
says. “Whenever we program drums,
we’re thinking about playing it on a
drum kit. What are you going to play
on that virtual kit you’ve created with
your sample selections? During fills and
rolls, we make sure there’s not three
hands playing stuff, so the hi-hats will
drop out during snare or tom fills. That
gives the illusion of having a real drummer.
Having things drop out and beats
missing really creates the illusion of
reality. We also record live drums. We
usually stick to a sampled kick, but we’ll
record live hi-hats; Jesse plays the pattern
and we quantize it. It’s a straight
overdub with a little processing. That
really brings the drums to life.”
Puodziukas admits there is “nothing
complicated about a 1/8th-note
hi-hat pattern,” but insists that having
the same pattern played by a
human hand produces “a psycho
acoustic effect.”
“You’re hearing the same sound
repeated but each one is slightly different
and unique to that pattern,”
he says. “That’s really important.
Why not just take the best hi-hat
and copy and paste it throughout
the whole track? Because that slight
bit of wander even when quantized
really pleases the ear.”
In addition to beat mechanics,
Keeler and Puodziukas are known for
the massive array of hardware synths
used in their productions, including
Korg MS-20, Moog Micromoog and
Voyager RME, Roland Juno-60, Juno-
106, JX-3P, MKS-80, and SH-101 synths,
TR-707 and TR-909 drum machines,
Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, and
Fist of God’s most used item, the
Roland MKS-80 Super Jupiter. Throughout
Fist of God, the Super Jupiter can
be heard running backwards, zooming
like a crashing spaceship and seemingly
inhaling and exhaling. MSTRKRFT
attribute the latter effect to sidechain
compression or “ducking.”
“We use sidechain compressors
like a Drawmer DS201 [Dual Noise
Gate] or a stock [Waves] C1
compressor set up to duck the hihats
out of the way when the kick
drum enters to make it sound more
like a real kit,” Keeler says. “And
that’s also what gives the synths
those different effects.”
You’ve heard the effects of
sidechain compression a hundred
times. Remember that big sucking
sound in Daft Punk’s “One More Time”
or similar sonic tomfoolery in Thomas
Bangalter & DJ Falcon’s “Together”?
“It’s a special effect; it sounds like
studio processing,” Puodziukas
explains. You’re trying to achieve a
radio effect where you’ve got a hard
master compressor on stereo program
material. Anything above 100Hz is getting
pulled down by the heavy kick
drum ’cause it’s pushing so much more
energy than the top frequencies when
you put it through a heavy compressor.
So the ducker is to achieve that effect
but in a controlled manner.
“In ‘Fist of God’ and ‘Vuvuvu,’ the
Super Jupiter is being ducked out of
the way of the kick drum. At times it
sounds like it’s being reversed, because
the envelope the ducking creates is
kind of unnatural because it’s a slow
attack and a hard release. By jockeying
the release time on the ducker it gives
that swelling effect. We usually try to
time it on an upbeat so you have a kick
drum on the downbeats, and by timing
the release of the processor, you’ll get
a swing up on the 1/8th note in
between the main beats. All you need
is a compressor with a sidechain input.
It’s an exciting sound; it gives the
impression that the track is cooking
and crushing everything.”
In addition to ducking, “Vuvuvu”
also features a bizarre deceleration
section where the synths, beat, and
everything else slows to an almost
painful BPM.
“It’s an ascending chromatic scale
from the Super Jupiter,” Puodziukas
says. “The idea was to have that pattern
running, then during the break just slow
it down until it became in time with the
original tempo, but the rhythmic figure
is different and the actual pattern was
truncated. If the original pattern was 2,
it would be 1.75 times the original
length. To execute that idea took some
brainpower and a calculator. Once the
pattern slows down, it’s running at a
different BPM in relation to the original
BPM, but it’s being truncated to fit over
the original BPM. The de-acceleration
was a programmed tempo change in
Pro Tools.”
By now you can tell that Keeler and
Puodziukas are thoroughly old-school,
at least in their attitude regarding live
instrumentation versus programming.
That also influenced their choice of
control surface. While they use Pro
Tools to assemble the bits and bobs,
recording is done via a 1971 Neve 8016
24-channel 8-bus console—loaded with
Neve 1064 EQs—which they lovingly
call “Rhiannon.” And for good reason.
Theirs is the exact Neve console used
to record Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled
album, which produced the 1975 hit,
“Rhiannon.”
“It’s a special console, and we’ve put
a lot of work into it to keep it
functional,” Puodziukas says. “It’s built
like a tank. It’s all military spec, 1971, so
the wiring is the same quality that is
used on missile silos. It really does have
a certain spirit. Every Neve sounds different,
and this one has a signature
sound you can hear in our productions.”
The console also serves as a
reminder to not cut corners when it
comes to recording signals going in.
“On old mixing desks, EQ was
called ‘correction’,” Keeler says. “I tell
the kids on our message boards to
take that mentality when recording.
Get the sound right going in and
don’t try to use all manner of
processing, and only effect it in Pro
Tools if you are not happy with it. A
lot of the sounds on our record are
the natural sounds produced by the
instrument. We only messed with levels.
Letting things breathe is a good
idea, and just being careful and not
overprocessing sounds.”
For a duo as popular as MSTRKRFT—
they’ve remixed Yeahs Yeahs Yeahs,
Kylie Minogue, Brazilian Girls, Usher,
and many others to great acclaim,
and even R&B superstar John Legend
insisted he appear on Fist of God
(“Heartbreaker”)—they seem
strangely stuck in a sonic time warp
of their own design.
“Is it just us being nostalgic?” Keeler
wonders. “I really believe that these
traditional processes end up sounding
better in terms of harmonics. Digital is
great, but it is has a frequency range.
These analog sounds that are not even
audible do affect your production
sound; they can even change the other
frequencies. That doesn’t happen in
digital. Digital can only do harmonic
emulation, but it is not actually happening.
It’s just static fuzz.”