Interview: Blonde Redhead lose creative control

Penny Sparkle may be the eighth album Blonde Redhead have released in an illustrious career but don't think for a second that life for the Brooklyn trio gets easier by the album. In a revealing interview conducted just as the album came out last month, drummer Simone Pace talks Ragged Words through the difficulty in giving up control - in this case to Fever Ray producers Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid - and how he, brother Amedeo and singer Kazu Makino came out the other side.

My first impression with the new album was that it’s a lot mellower than previous records, particularly 23. Does it feel that way to you?

"Yeah it's pretty mellow. I listened to it the other day, not paying too much attention and I sort of felt that a lot. It's hard because when you're involved in it, you don't really think about stuff like that too much. I think it's more minimal and very sparse so that makes it have that feeling too."

Was that the plan from the start, to strip things back a bit?

"The record was produced by two Swedish guys Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt (Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid) so as far as being minimal, that’s very much what they do so we had to fight to have more stuff on it. It would have been even more minimal if it was just up to them. They just didn't think that there needed to be so much information in order for you to hear it."

In the press release accompanying the record, Kazu writes that you had “never made a record this way.” Did she mean that in terms of allowing someone else into the process?

"I think so. It was the first record that was really almost a collaboration. 23 we produced on our own but Henrik and Pedar have such an imprint on the record, such a voice on it, it was something very new for us. We'd never done that before."

Why Henrik and Pedar and how did you come to meet them?

"We were upstate for six months writing the songs and trying to do pre-production and the A&R for 4AD came up and he suggested that we go see Fever Ray, talk to them and see if they were interested in collaborating with us. We went to meet them and pretty soon afterwards Kazu decided to go to Sweden and work on 'Here Sometimes' - she was the only one of us who actually went to Stockholm throughout the whole process - and what came back form her first trip was really different but we liked it. I mean it wasn't easy because it was very much giving up on what we were trying to do. Letting someone else have control was hard but it was also really, really interesting to try and see what our music would sound like through somebody else's eyes.”

“We just started working on that song, and then one more, sending files from upstate to Sweden. Within two months we were completely involved with them in the process and they really liked the songs and really thought they could have an influence. We were ready because we were moving very, very slowly and I don't want to say we needed the help but in some ways we did because after making so many records, it gets difficult to imagine reinventing yourself and really taking things to a different level every single time."

Is that the inevitable result of recording together for almost 20 years? Has it started to get harder with every album?

“No, not necessarily because 23 was pretty simple. That happened pretty naturally but this one was a little more difficult. We were upstate, isolated and I guess it’s hard to count on yourself and two other people for everything. When you’re in the city and you’re seeing friends or being exposed to art and music and culture, I think it’s quite easy to get inspired and get ideas. We really started off in a place where we didn’t have much of that except for what we had to offer on our own.”

Did the record change drastically then from what you had written upstate once you started collaborating?

"Yeah, they did. We have a lot of versions of the songs and some of the ones we did upstate are great. I think the second song on the record, ‘Not Getting There’, came out on vinyl only for 4AD on Record Store Day and that version is the one written upstate. There was also another person involved which was really, really important. His name was Drew Brown and while we were working with the Henrik and Peder, we were here with Drew in the Magic Shop in New York City. He came for 10 days and we recorded a whole load of different stuff for most of the songs and he had a real input on the record by opening things up for us and he made us do things in a different way. He made us try different instruments - we bought some keyboards, rented some keyboards - he had a really good influence on Kazu too and on her singing. A couple of songs are just first takes from when he was with us. If you buy the record on iTunes, I think there are two versions of a couple of songs on there - one from the Magic Shop, the other by Henrik and Pedar and you realise how much influence people, place and time have on the record. I know that’s a lot of information, but it was a really crazy record! Maybe that’s what Kazu meant, it was very different - sending files from Europe to the US, doing Skye conferences. It’s amazing you can do that now. Amazing to try and you learn a lot."

Between skyping and sending files over and back, when did things start coming together?

"We were going to go and join Kazu Stockholm at one point but we decided to stay and try to record more ideas because they (Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid) did not have enough to work with. As soon as Kazu came back, I think it made them work harder and brought things to another level. I think maybe Henrik and Pedar sensed things weren’t going as well as we wanted them to and that’s when things really turned around and everything started coming together. Once that was done we all met in New York - all of us at the same time - and we were kind of dreading it because there was a lot of egos and a lot of opinions in the same room. But that worked out pretty well. We then went to a cheaper, smaller studio to listen and organise everything before sending it to Alan Moulder who mixed the record."

It all sounds like a lot of hard work!

“Yeah, it was pretty tough because it took a really long time. It was hard because it was a different way of making music. It was hard because there was a lot of time between waiting for people to be free to work, waiting for files to come, waiting for people to take time off, weekends  to be available. There was no momentum. It’s not like being in the studio for a month. Boom, you’re done. It was kind of crazy and chaotic for a while. I think you can hear that in the record."

Would it encourage you to work in the same way again or will you run a mile from any similar collaboration in the future?

“I think it’s like saying would you rather have a girlfriend or be single! There’s good and bad things about both. Being involved with other people, if you get along, it can be amazing. The exchange of ideas, even conflicts, can create amazing stuff. Whereas working with the same people for a long time, you know what you can do, you know each other and you know you can count on them for certain things. It’s different. Both things work, both are great but I think for this record it was good to try something out. I mean, I had a hard time, I had to give up on a lot of stuff that I wanted to do just to produce the space but through that, you learn too. You learn how to be more humble, how to see your place and then you have to work harder to take the music back and make it your own.”
Penny Sparkle is out now, buy it here. Blonde Redhead will be back to tour Europe sometime next year.