Austin Sound

If you follow the Austin music scene pretty closely you may have already noticed one line keeps popping up over and over in liner notes: “Recorded by Erik Wofford at Cacophony Recorders.” Wofford’s fingerprints are on some of the best records coming out of Austin recently - The Black Angels, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Explosions In The Sky, Voxtrot, Brothers And Sisters, The Octopus Project, Zykos, and dozens more. His records are starting to be recognized for their unique aesthetic - a vintage rock sound, often awash in natural reverb. That natural reverb is a result of Cacophony’s recording space, a beautiful loft on Austin’s east side with 28 foot ceilings and a view of the lake. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Erik Wofford a few weeks ago to discuss his philosophy on recording and a few of the details of how things work at Cacophony Recorders.

Your recordings always have a pretty unique sound. How would you describe that?

I guess it’s something about the drums, guitars and the vocals. The drums are pretty distinct. I think they sound best in a big acoustic space, and so I generally just try making everything as big as possible. A lot of musicians like that too. Starting in the 80’s, when you started to be able to multi-track stuff, everybody wanted to have everything in its own little place. I think I subscribe a little bit more to a vintage style of working and sound. Like a wall of sound - and sometimes that doesn’t work for some projects. If some people want 40-something overdubs, not everything can be really big.

Who are some of your influences as far as other producers?

Well, I was talking about the “Wall of Sound”, stuff like Phil Spector and Motown. The 60’s stuff was what really got me into recording. That is what took me down the road of looking at a certain way of presenting music, a more simple approach of really getting down to the song. Tchad Blake is a big influence of mine. He does a little bit of work these days but back in the day he did a lot of stuff with Los Lobos. I’m a big fan of Dave Fridmann too, particularly his older work with The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and Mogwai.

A lot of engineers are in a safety zone and like it there. They seem afraid to do anything that isn’t “by the book.” You, like Dave Fridmann, don’t seem afraid to experiment with sound. Why is that?

A lot of engineers are afraid to break the rules, and there are no rules. It’s creative music, and since I’m not a musician I use the studio as an instrument. That is my creative outlet. The guy who masters a lot of my records told me that a few years ago, “you sometimes go a little too far over on some things, but that’s not a bad thing. I like how you don’t treat sounds too preciously.” I’m not afraid to mangle it up or do something really experimental.

Would you describe your tracking / control room for people who haven’t seen it?

Most studios are divided into a control room and a live room. The producer and engineer listens (over the speakers) to what the microphones are hearing while the rest of the band is in another room playing. With my studio everything is in one room and it gets a different dynamic than a typical recording studio. Other people who come into work really like the aspect of everybody being together in one room. It really helps the communication.

Even before I wanted to do recording I knew that it was extremely important to see a band live and to listen to what they sound like. Nobody else did that. They would just set up mics, then get the band to play, and go listen in the control room. That would be the point of reference - whatever ended up coming through the mics. I always liked that personal approach of saying, “play a song for me … I want to hear what things really sound like.” It always kind of helped bands feel a little more at ease when people actually care about what work they put into their sound.

Is there a type of band you prefer to work with?

I like to work with bands that think creatively and not formulaically. I also like to work with bands who have a fairly good idea what they want and where they want to go. It’s their art, and in the end they need to be the most happy with it of anybody.

In this age of Pro Tools why do you chose to do your tracking directly to tape?

There are two reasons. One is that it absolutely sounds best going to tape. There is no question about it - at least for guitar-bass-drums rock music. That’s from the sonic standpoint. But when I first started using the tape machine I noticed that people were performing differently, because when you are working on tape there isn’t the safety net of being able to pitch correct something, or move the part around if its out of time, or punch in little tiny words or do a million vocal takes and do a composite of all of that. When people know that there are not limitless options for fixing whatever is wrong the music they play a little better.

I like that way of working because it really is a lot more fun, and it is more tactile, whereas when you work on a computer it feels like a video game sometimes. Another thing that is very important is that all of your senses are linked, and if you are sitting there watching music go by on a computer screen, you are actually allotting a certain amount of brain power towards visually taking in that stuff. If you are working on tape you can just close your eyes and focus much more on the sounds of things. I am the type of person who learns and operates very well hands-on. It is a way of working that I think is getting lost. Lately I have had to go to Pro Tools for some mixing, because people want to do a bunch of overdubs. And working on a computer is good because you can fine tune things the way you can’t on tape. I find that as long as I go to tape first it kind of preserves that warmth and presence - all of those good words.

For the tech nerds out there, will you talk a little bit about the kind of gear you use at the studio?

I use an Otari MTR90 MKII 2″ 24 track tape machine for all my tracking. Sometimes I’ll transfer the tape to pro tools and do some of the finer details of editing and mixing in the digital domain, but I definitely don’t use it as much as the rest of the industry. I’ll always use my mixing console, whether I’m working on tape or in the computer. It’s got a sound you can really take a bite into. The board came from Avast Recording Company in Seattle. Lots of classic early grunge records were done on this board like Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Earth. Later on it was used for some Built to Spill, Damien Jurado and Pedro The Lion. I like the heritage it has now. From there I’ll mix down to an Otari MTR10 1/4″ 2 track tape machine to give everything the last dose of analog flavor.

When mixing I tend to really like effects, but try not to overdo it. I’ve found that analog effects blend with the music better. I use lots of tape or analog delays, spring reverbs, and natural room reverb. I haven’t used digital reverb on a drum in years, thank god. If I could afford a plate reverb, I’d have one of those, but I found a fairly convincing digital one which is mostly what I use for big luscious sounds.

When I’m tracking, I tend to use a lot of tube condensers and ribbon microphones. They’ve got a good character I like. Peluso and Royer are two of my favorites. I’ll always use high quality outboard mic pre’s because I can’t afford a $100,000 console that would have as good of mic pre’s that you can buy individually. I have a variety from clean to dirty, solid state to tube, fine tuned eq to super broad. It’s good to have options, but there is a point when you can overdo it. I skirt that line all the time. I have a lot of different compressors for sound control, tone shaping, or just plain old mangling. I generally prefer everything to hit a little bit of a compressor, even if it’s not doing anything. Everything has a sound! I think I’ll just leave it at that.