54.0°
Hold the Bacon: Nick DeNoia, Frank Fletcher, Eric Matlock, and Erv Wolf ham it up as STC. Photo by Court Leve |
CommentsDon't Change the Subject
Truckee band Subjektochange gives us "Stuff"
Published: April 8, 2010by Jackie Varriano
Good things come to those who wait four years. For example, four years can get you a college degree, the Golden Gate Bridge, and finally, the release of the first album from Truckee band Subjektochange, “Stuff.”
STC first came together in 2006, when Eric Matlock, Nick DeNoia, and former drummer Ray Erst (all from the Jeff Jones Band) decided to get a little more funky. They ran into Erv Wolf onstage one night at Bar of America when he was scheduled to play, but his backup band had flown the coop. Four years later and with a new drummer, Frank “Fletch” Fletcher, the men have temporarily put aside their side projects, day jobs, and everyday life to give rabid fans and regular folk “Stuff” — a 12-song romp through the inner workings of STC and the minds of three very different songwriters. I sat down with Matlock and DeNoia on a storm day in late winter to see why they made us wait so long.
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist,” said Matlock. “We had talked about doing an album … and I didn’t want to half-ass it. I wanted to make sure it was a good album.” Matlock’s perfectionism aside, STC spent around a six-month period of time without a drummer, something of a necessity when thinking of recording an album. Erst moved to Reno and the boys auditioned around 10 different drummers before finding Fletch. “Fletch has been a real turning point for the group, a real positive influence,” DeNoia said.
It didn’t take long for Fletch to blend into STC’s self-described “KosmiKaliFunk.” Although Matlock said it took a while for it to all “gel up,” he added that by the time they got down to recording, “We knew most of the songs really well but were still able to bring something fresh into the studio.”
Taking the next step as a band to transition from playing live shows to recording a serious studio effort is a heavy decision.
Studio time costs money, something many unsigned acts don’t exactly have in spades. Luckily for STC, Matlock had some producing experience and a free space available in Truckee to record. “I was getting up to snuff on mixing and getting pretty good at it,” Matlock said. “It sort of became a time or money thing. We could have either spent a lot of money getting it done the way we wanted, or spent a lot of time — and that’s what we did. Between my office and our houses we were able to do all the recordings ourselves using our, and some borrowed, equipment. The most expensive part of the recording process was several hundred dollars for software and plug-ins, and my time I guess.”
It’s been said that recording a studio album is akin to holding a microscope over your sound; suddenly, minor discrepancies in tonality, pitch, and timing seem obvious and gigantic. Fortunately, Matlock has had years of experience in audio/visual work and admits that the finished product “sounds better than I thought I could make it sound. It’s really difficult to get that professional sheen on an album.”
For anyone who has worn a hole through a CD by their favorite band, only to be disappointed by a live performance, it’s obvious that what happens in the studio often stays in the studio. This magical process is called multitrack recording. When a group gets together in the studio, they don’t just play a song once through, record it, and call it a day. In the case of STC, they didn’t have the ability to track every band member live at once. According to Matlock, the process was a little different.
“We could play live together and record the drums really well, so we put all the energy into hearing the drums. Now we have this great foundation to work off, so now we bring up the guitar, and then bring up the bass and then overdub our parts back in — recreating what we recorded first and then layering.” According to DeNoia and Matlock, there were times when the guys thought the song sounded great; and then when they went in to re-cover the bass, keyboard, and guitar they realized they could mess around a bit and add extra parts. “I don’t have four hands,” Matlock joked. “I can’t always play the extra keyboard parts, but we were able to throw in an extra sound effect that I might not be able to do live.”
Redubbing parts and adding in extra sound effects sound like a crime? Believe it or not, in the recording world it would hardly qualify as a traffic ticket. The real misdemeanors and felonies come from voice tuning with digital recorders, heavy cutting and pasting, and playing to a backing track. Think about the Ashley Simpson “SNL” debacle, or Britney Spears’ potential ban on playing in Australia until she sings live. These are perfect examples of musical felonies, a distinction STC held to in their recording process.
“There was no changing of notes,” said DeNoia. “[Eric] would change the sound, and maybe where it was in the mix.”
“I limited my tweaking to sculpting the tones and didn’t do a lot of performance cutting. We tried to avoid the cut and paste,” Matlock said. “It wasn’t put through a magic filter; most things are true to where they started out. [Mixing is] still a lot of guess and check and try again.”
So what does it sound like, you ask? All said and done, the time spent on the album shines through, as the 12 tracks are as polished as a new penny. Wolf, DeNoia, and Matlock all contributed four songs to the disc. Matlock was right on when he said, “Everything is going to rock pretty hard, whatever it is. You get a good sense of each songwriter’s style, but it all gets run through the STC filter.”
Don’t get me wrong, polished is not synonymous with sterile. “Stuff” is a fresh-feeling brand of funk light. I say funk light because STC is an equal opportunity group that doesn’t always rely on bass and drums while downplaying melody or harmony.
Matlock zings through a killer keyboard solo in “Shameless,” a tune written by Wolf. The tracks don’t get bogged down by a clear-cut return to the same chorus. Matlock is definitely the funkiest, while Wolf’s tunes feature clever lyrics (“I always take my time to hesitate” on the seventh track, “Late”). DeNoia’s four tracks feature great guitar solos and jam elements, but for me, I really feel the STC brand when listening to “Question Mark” and “Nation,” both written by Matlock. If I had to choose a single to hear on the radio — distinguishing this terrific Truckee band from the likes of Phish, String Cheese Incident, or Big Light — these would be the two I wholeheartedly support.
But as a fan of deep cuts, what do I know? Give “Stuff” a listen and let me know what your favorite track is, and be sure to catch STC live soon. In the words of Matlock, “We really are a live band. The record will still be the record, and live will be live.” Check out STC online at stcmusic.com.
~ Comment on this story online at moonshineink.com.
0 Reader Comments so far ...
Be the first to comment on this article!